


Order Through Pain

by Captain_Panda



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety Attacks, Brainwashing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt/Comfort, Hydra Steve Rogers, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Rehabilitation, Rescue, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, mentions of torture, steve rogers has a heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 07:01:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23847136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Captain_Panda/pseuds/Captain_Panda
Summary: February 11, 1945. Hydra captures and brainwashes Captain America.For the next seventy years, Steve Rogers goes on to become one of the most hated men in history, the symbol of an underworld.Now, alongside top-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. intelligence, part-time consultant Tony Stark is camped out in the Serbian desert, prepared to take down Captain Hydra and free the world of the monster who has terrorized them for nearly four score.Only problem: he remembers the man Captain Hydra used to be. And he doesn't want to be the person to bury Captain America.
Relationships: Steve Rogers & Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 37
Kudos: 140





	Order Through Pain

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be a very difficult fic to tag. If you've made it this far, you know one thing: this is not a happy story. Unlike most in its genre, it's one with a happy ending.
> 
> It's almost easier to state what _Order Through Pain_ is _**not**_ than what it is. 
> 
> First things first: **There is no sexual content in this story.** No non-con, dub-con, or consensual hanky panky takes place.
> 
> Second: _Order Through Pain_ is _not_ a Winter Soldier Steve fic. However, it does contain (i) brainwashing and (ii) implied torture. Without spoiling the story, (iii) severely claustrophobic readers may not wish to proceed. There is one warning not mentioned but, with the "happy ending" tag, I feel it is not necessary to tag it. You have been "warned."
> 
>  ** _Order Through Pain_ also does not follow canon: the Chitauri battle never occurred, and the Avengers Initiative was scrapped.** As a result, Tony Stark is an as-needed consultant for S.H.I.E.L.D. and Phil Coulson is alive. This story takes place in 2014, when _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_ premiered.
> 
> Finally, _Order Through Pain_ is _not_ a fic that glorifies Hydra. Views expressed by Steve, particularly early on, may be upsetting to readers. They are a reflection of brainwashing. Please know none of these views are shared by the author. I approached this story with great trepidation and wrote it with as much care as humanly possible.
> 
> With all of that said, I do hope you enjoy this story. It was one hell of a ride to write.
> 
> Yours,  
> -Cap'n Panda

* * *

**Prologue – _The Appointment_**

Actually, as far as interrogations went, it was fairly tame.

Two low-cuts escorted the newcomer into the room. Ignoring the known elements, S.R. took one look at the man in the middle and smelled blood in the water. Satisfied by his suspicions, he passed judgment, remaining seated in his chair at the head of the war table. He could hear the audible pause as the low-cuts accepted his evaluation. A Roman thumb, downturned.

Unaware of the ritual condemnation, the infiltrator saluted perfectly, then bowed, before he husked out, “Captain. _Hail Hydra_.”

“Hail Hydra,” repeated S.R. calmly, the words familiar, heavy, and tasteful, as worn and metallic as the medals on his shoulder, just like the war cupped in his hands, words this _infil_ had no business uttering. Distracting his rage with the glass of clear liquid on the table, S.R. swished it in hand and observed, far too casually: “You’re left-handed.”

The _infil_ flexed his left hand, spasmodically. The low-cut on that side pinned his arm more firmly. “I think,” S.R. went on softly, still seated, still damningly seated, “it would be, how should I put this—” He drew the glass near to his lips, reeking of oil, tainted with enough poison to kill either low-cut in less than a minute, “—instructive, to preserve it.”

He took a sip of his drink—the signal—and the _infil_ cried out as the low-cut on his right crunched his hand against the table, a swift, brutal movement taught to all in their enlistment.

 _Here is how to break a person’s resolve. It begins with the hands. Enough pain in the fingers will destroy a person’s sanity_. 

The _infil_ drew in a sharp, recovering breath through his nose, holding the bruising, bluing appendage to his chest. S.R. stood, looming over them all. He was six foot, three inches tall in his boots. Half a head taller than any of them.

“I think,” S.R. resumed, prowling forward, setting the empty glass aside, breath oozing poison, “we are done, playing games, like children.” Grasping the _infil’s_ right hand in a hard, bruising grip, he evaluated over his warbling cry, “Lots of bones in the hand. Each one, sensitive. Movable.” He let the _infil_ go, agony in the sweat glazed on his face. “But not soft,” he mused. 

For the briefest millisecond, he flicked his gaze to the low-cut on the right, who promptly stepped away. The low-cut on the left was half a beat behind him, and both of the underlings stepped a full pace back, at rest, leaving him full range. He grasped the _infil_ by the throat, choking off a gurgling noise, and lofted him clear off his feet, not hard enough to crush, but high enough to choke, to emphasize in action, “Do you think I am soft? That I will invite you to my side? That you will dine with me? That you will die for me?”

The man thrashed a little, involuntary spasms that abruptly gave in as, with a choked off wheeze, he rolled his gaze to look at S.R., blood-stained eyes as wide as they could go. Only then did S.R. pitch him onto the floor with a clatter, like he weighed nearly nothing. He landed heavily, limply. S.R. commanded, “Get up.” The man did not move. Snapping his fingers impatiently, S.R. watched with indifference as his low-cuts heaved the _infil_ to his feet. The _infil’s_ face was ashen, but he met S.R.’s gaze and even managed in a low, scorched tone:

“Nick Fury is coming for you.”

A shark-tooth smile graced S.R.’s lips. Already, he could feel the tremor of cold sinking into his skin, the nails of the poison settling in his belly. It was its own torture, its sown game, but he was never one to shy away from it. There was no torture, no fear, no pain he would not endure, break through, long after the low-cuts trembled and died. It was the only way to rise. To be stronger than the pain. Than _any_ pain.

“Is he?” he whispered, flattening a smooth, bone-white hand against the table—pale, almost anemic. He needed to eat more, to sleep more, to attend his mortal flesh more, but it was easy to devote, to kneel, to die for Hydra than to live for Hydra. Even the simple action of drinking poison was easier than pausing for a meal when an interrogation awaited. It enlivened him; it electrified him. 

Doing work was better than doing nothing; doing work was feeding the _hive_. Languishing in his own high-cut status would only undo all the strength he had fostered through pain, turning him soft again.

 _Order only comes through pain_.

Releasing the table, he turned to face the man—to face the so-called recruit. The liar brought to the lion’s den.

 _Do you feed me, N.F.?_ he mused. _Do you make these offerings in supplication, or arrogance?_

It did not matter. The outcome was the same: “Nick Fury will die with his flock. You will be my messenger.” Turning away from them, he added in rock hard condemnation, “Get it out of my sight.”

The door clanged shut behind them. S.R. returned to his chair and sank back into his noiseless meditation, like its own sleep, patiently awaiting A.P.’s return. He didn’t long for his arrival, any more than he longed for a particular emotion; he simply knew it was the next predictable parameter, unlike the unpredictable knocks on the door, and the prospects they would bring. A.P. would have new mission parameters. It would be agreeable to get outside, to stretch his legs; he chafed belowground.

It had been six weeks since he’d been aboveground. For all he knew, the sun was gone and never coming back. 

_I do not need it_.

The healthy thing was, he truly didn’t. He was red to the bone, red to the marrow, red in every way, and red thrived in _darkness_. Humans could not see red in darkness. Hydra delivered darkness, absolute, stable, comfortingly indifferent.

It was, in an odd way, home.

* * *

**ACT 1**

**THE HUNT**

* * *

**Act 1, Scene 1 – _To Shoot an Elephant_**

“That’s it,” Tony Stark declared, cocking his gun. “I’m nailing the bastard myself.”

“Really,” Clint Barton grumbled, huddling under a makeshift awning in the Deliblato Sands in Serbia, tenderly pressing an ice pack to his black eye. He’d been through the meat grinder, but Tony was more impressed he was _alive_ than anything. Until Barton was discreetly dumped in a literal trash bag five miles from their rural encampment, Tony had assumed that Hydra simply made liars and killed them or embraced infiltrators as their own.

Tony hadn’t believed there _was_ a middle ground. He had told Nick Fury as much when he had proposed the shotgun plan, following lead after lead further from society until they reached the one, the only Captain Hydra’s location being right damn _here_ , a mere two-hour over-land journey to a deep underground hideout in the desert. Tony had insisted that they would make Barton and kill him, but Barton was nothing if not a stubborn bastard, and they _did_ want to nail Hydra’s poster boy to a cross if they could, under any circumstances; at this point, nearly anything was worth the risk. 

Tony didn’t think it counted as much of a _middle ground_ when they cut open the trash bag and found a half-conscious Barton slurring, _Yeah, that fucking worked_.

He’d been roughed up, mostly by lackeys on the way out, but he’d also met King Tut himself, dwelling deep in his underground lair—couldn’t tell where it was, exactly, removing the possibility of a tactical strike, but their GPS tracker gave them a vague ballpark, and that was a start. He’d also confirmed that Tut _lived up to the legend_. 

“Bleeds, doesn’t he?” Tony grunted, decidedly unsteady and extremely pissed off. He fucking _knew_ it was a bad idea to send in Barton without a more elaborate plan than, _He’s got eighteen years of top-notch spy experience, how hard can it be to appeal to a brainwashed monster?_

King Tut wasn’t just a brainwashed monster—he was _the_ face of Hydra, the guy who orchestrated dozens of terrorist attacks and struck fear into the hearts of millions. He was the wolf who showed up at high-level meetings uninvited with cool demands to see whoever was in charge, only to vanish before security could do more than collectively shit their pants. 

He was every bit as superhuman as advertised—escape passages carved by his killing hands featured broken walls and rent steel, declawed brick; the unfortunates in his path were nothing more than bloody carcasses, decapitated bodies and ribcages crushed under his boots like houses of cards—and that made him ten times more dangerous than the best SEAL team on the planet. 

He’d been _shot_ , on camera, at least five times, and never once gone down below a knee—that occasion was miraculous, and Tony had even thought, _This is the day the world changes_ , but then King Tut yanked a knife out of his own boot, killed his would-be assassin with a shuriken throw that would’ve made Romanoff proud, and vanished with blood streaming from his throat before anyone could get a hand on him. Following, he made no public appearances for three months, but he did transmit a sweet message that night, using pidgin sign language for the masses: _Hello, world. Hail fucking Hydra_. Before signing off with, he curled a hand, showing a clear middle finger.

It pissed Tony off, is what it did, and he vowed after that little incident to personally put the dog down for the sake of world peace, because there was no way they’d be safe with _that_ running around, threatening to show up like a vampire in the night ready to suck the blood from whatever VIPs happened to be in attendance. Government officials were scared shitless; the bodyguard industry wasn’t prepared to _meet_ the demand, not for Captain fucking _Hydra_.

He was an Avengers level threat, a threat beyond what the world was ready to handle, S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Number One Most Wanted, and former Captain, U.S.A.F., Steven Grant Rogers, King Tut Himself, had an estimated bounty of—even Tony salivated at the number, imagining new suits, imagining a _hell_ of an afterparty—$2.01 billion.

Billion. With a _b._

It was a pool, the plea of fifty-six countries, including the United States and Nations; the collective vengeance of 1,029 assassinations of low- and high-ranking officials, sixty-one directly attributable to King Tut himself; and the ultimate reward for the _professional_ bounty hunter. He was so goddamn lethal that even the most ambitious, money-hungry amateur wouldn’t touch him, _couldn’t_ touch him. 

_S.H.I.E.L.D._ couldn’t fucking touch him.

But now they were in firing squad distance, and it was agonizing. They could have _nuked_ the facility and called it a day, wiped their hands clean of the reign of Captain Hydra, but there were a quarter of a million civilian lives in the danger zone. It was on the table, and that was the degree of desperation they had been reduced to, but they didn’t dare schedule an evac, didn’t even _whisper_ to officials that it was in the air. Cap would be the first to flee the nest, and then where would they be?

 _Let’s try the easy way,_ Barton had insisted, like it was possible that, underneath all the impossible stunts and threats, King Tut really was just a figurehead, an easy mark.

Hell of a figurehead, Tony thought, looking at Barton, feeling sick. Even in full tactical gear, Tony felt supremely vulnerable. _And_ he had a _gun_.

 _And_ he knew that King Tut didn’t venture out of his lair for just _any_ party. He was surprised that Captain Hydra hadn’t made an appearance at any of _Tony Stark’s_ parties, actually—there was a time, before he’d seen the slaughter up close, when he would have been offended, _aren’t I important enough to Robin Hood?_ —but he was grateful, these days. Extremely grateful—he slept better, knowing that Tut preferred to dwell in his tomb, to let the lackeys run the show and strike more politically important targets. Fear. Power. Control. Evidently, he wasn’t on the list— _yet_.

All the more reason, he thought—scowling fiercely as he shoved his gun into its holster and stalked off, too sick to look at Barton, hunched and hurting, any longer—to get him before he got _them_. It was only a matter of time before Hydra made a bigger move—they’d been taking small shots for decades, but the pot had been boiling for years. It was high time they made an _impression_ , yet they’d let the tension ricochet long past the point of tolerable, letting violence fester, civil wars break out as Hydra cells grew like bacterial colonies, all loyal to their one Supreme Leader—Captain Hydra. 

His dear old Dad hadn’t been able to put down the biggest threat to world peace, but Tony fucking Stark would.

Put a fucking _end_ to this nonsense, to this reign of terror at the hands of _one man_ , a man who seemed perfectly content to hide away and let them throw mice in the hole to be devoured. It was a goddamn miracle Barton had come back alive. Stalking off to Fury’s tent, he pushed through the flap without asking, mind made up.

“Iron Man can do it,” he said. Dead silence followed the pronouncement. Hill and Coulson, huddled around the Director on a mat, looked at him in undisguised disapproval. He ignored them. “He can.”

“Do you even _know_ ,” Fury began, but he already knew the argument, holding up a hand, cutting it off.

“The risk-benefits? Genius, remember?” He folded his arms over his chest, insisting sternly, “I _got_ this, and you wanna tell me to go home and leave it to the little guys? You wanna take down a monster, you need a bigger gun. Or was the _Avengers_ Initiative just for show?”

Jaw set, Fury looked between Hill, who looked stonily back, and Coulson, who looked at Tony seriously. “Stark, that’s a one-way trip,” he said bluntly.

Cold water spilled down Tony’s spine at the words, but he hadn’t come to sweat it out in Serbia to sit on the sidelines. He’d nearly flown the Quinjet himself when Fury had announced, _We’ve got him. We’re moving in one hour_. “Barton made it out,” he reminded. “It’s a skeleton crew.”

“They’ll blow the whistle,” Fury said, shaking his head. “Dominoes—we’ll have fires worldwide if this gets out of hand. You think you can stop that kind of chain reaction?”

Barton’s reckless confidence infused him: “Absolutely.”

Even Fury looked floored. Hill said smoothly, “Impossible.”

“It’s not,” Tony said, planting his foot. “They want him—me.” He shrugged, then pointed out, “Give ‘em a bone to chew. They’re not gonna pull the fire alarm. I get in. I take a shot. I get your guy. Then I get the hell out of dodge. You cut off the head, the whole thing falls apart. It’ll be anarchy. They won’t be able to tie their shoelaces without him. Get agents ready to move, we might be able to sweep the whole hive.”

“That’s your plan?” Coulson said, voice laced with incredulity. “Just gonna walk right in and—”

“Yup,” Tony said, popping the _p_. “Why, you have a better one?”

The silence pulsed in his ears. Fury and Hill exchanged a pointed look. Coulson shook his head slowly, insisting, “Stark, you’re—you’re a civilian. We can’t let you—”

“Oh, fuck _off_ ,” Tony growled, reaching into his pocket, jamming the metal bracelet onto his wrist, summoning the Mark VIII from his own tent. “What’s the problem here? I’m volunteering to risk my own life. There’s no warrantee here.” When the suit appeared, he clipped in, saying from behind the faceplate, “I hereby release you from responsibility for my death, but I want full credit for nailing King Tut.”

“This is suicide,” Fury said, low and serious, more serious than Tony had ever heard him, on his feet in the confined space.

“Yeah, I came here for the fresh air and sunshine,” Tony said, standing back in his suit and looking at him in the full desert light. “Really, I just wanna get back to my own bed. The sand. It’s coarse; it’s rough. Do you know how hard it is to sleep on _sand_?”

Fury looked at him, unimpressed. “Romanoff is a day away,” he insisted. “We should—”

“Captain Hydra will run in three hours,” Tony said bluntly, voice metallic, firm. “Two, maybe one. He knows we’re in the area; he’s not going to stay put. Never has before. Why start now? So we can tactically strike him down?” Hovering, he added, “S’exactly what I’m gonna do. Any last words?”

“For the love of God, Stark,” Coulson began, exasperated and anxious, making his way out of the tent, nearly tripping over the fold. “You’re going to jeopardize _millions_ of people. Director,” he entreated, turning to Fury, “you have to—”

“He’s a consultant,” Fury reminded, dismissed, in a clipped, irritable tone, glaring hard at Tony, one eye more piercing than most people’s two could ever hope to be. “A civilian. I can arrest you. Half a mind to, actually, but you’re useful to us, Stark. This is—”

“I’m telling you,” Tony said, very seriously, “we’ve got a shot. Let me take it. Worse comes to worst, write me a nice obituary. I’m fucking on this.” Refusing to waste another minute on wasted breath, he shot off, very aware that they couldn’t stop him—that Fury was cursing him, that Hill hadn’t moved from the tent, that Barton howled in something approaching triumph and appalment after him, _Crazy sonuvabitch!_

 _That’s my middle name_.

* * *

**Act 1, Scene 2 – _The King’s Tomb_**

The tomb of King Tut—the lair of Captain Hydra, Tony could call it by its real name, no codenames needed _here_ , at ground zero—was as dismal as he’d anticipated, and eerily barren. He walked right through the empty front doors of the abandoned, broken down stone building. The underground level was nearly concealed by collapsed stones, and it wasn’t immediately obvious how someone—let alone a man in a two-hundred-pound suit of armor—was supposed to fit through the narrow opening. 

Not daring to shine a flashlight on it, he used sonar to discern the gap, marveling at how well-concealed it was. _How the fuck did you find this?_ he wanted to ask Barton, and Fury, and Hydra, as he set about the difficult and nerve-wracking task of gently, inconspicuously enlarging the opening. He could go in guns blazing, but he wanted to maintain a tactical cover for as long as possible, and he’d already detected no lifeforms or electronic devices on this level; he was invisible as long as he stayed _quiet_ , and so he worked, slowly and steadily, at unburying the stairway to hell.

Then he descended into perfect darkness.

* * *

**Act 1, Scene 3 – _Smoke Signals_**

“Captain. _Hail Hydra_ ,” J.S. greeted him in the hallway, saluting. The Captain ignored him, brow furrowed, jaw locked. “Sir?” J.S. asked, confused, worried. Always worried. “Are we—”

“I smell—burning,” S.R. deflected, alarm in J.S.’s tone as he replied:

“What?”

“Burning,” S.R. repeated impatiently, moving down the hallway, a hand on the wall for balance, heavy, slow. He should not have had the last drink. He should have had a meal. It had been a while, and he was slow, and not thinking clearly, and J.S. swam in doubles before him, but he could clearly smell: “Burning fuel. We are under attack.”

“My God,” J.S. said, turning and hurrying down the hallway, shouting, “Lock it down! Lock it down!”

Descending to the sub-command level, nothing more than a tunnel, the Captain dropped to his knees, slamming them into the stone, scraping them bloody. He gagged, but somehow did not wretch, pulling himself together enough to remove the stones concealing the escape tunnel. It was imperative that he escape. Not for his own life—never for his own life—but for A.P. He owed it to the man to report, to survive.

 _Survive to report_.

He could smell the acrid smoky oily tint, heavy in the confined underground damp air, hear noises, muffled, shouted conversation, but it did not matter, he was already Army-crawling through the tunnel, rearranging stones behind himself with firm kicks, collapsing the tunnel. 

_Follow me now_ , he dared, slinking off into perfect darkness, world weaving. _You will pay for this_ , he thought, wondering which target A.P. would send him to next. There was always hell to pay, twice as much for every one knock they got in. For every offensive N.F. made, A.P. struck back, twice as hard.

He made it to the adjacent, claustrophobic, unused storage room, knew he would be on his own for the remainder of his escape, but he was pleased that he had made it thus far. _I follow my orders_ , he thought, in a rare moment of self-congratulation. _I do not fail_.

It was maybe an hour before he finally emerged from the sandy earth, exhausted but alive, emphatically alone. There was no J.S., the only high-cut in the facility. There were no low-cuts, either. No chaos, no fire. No blood. Everything was eerily calm up here. He knew that whatever was happening below must be thoroughly distracting for there to be no show up here.

Wasting no time, he shambled to his feet, moving at a low, loping clip, off into the desert. If he could kill a camel, he would be fine for the journey; if he couldn’t, then he would simply turn back in two days and, dying of thirst, break into society and regroup that way. It was risky, and he was tired, unsteady, startled by the bright light, but he moved at a good clip, engrained in him. 

_Run. Run, like your life depends on it_.

He’d trained for it, countless times, in every circumstance: blind like now, but also bleeding profoundly, ears full of white noise, mouth full of blood and water, the dead and dying around him, comrades, former friends— _there are no friends here_ —operating under the most abominable conditions imaginable, he could still run for days, for long miles, at a clip that defied comprehension.

Thus it was, that King Tut escaped into the desert, while Tony Stark descended deeper into his tomb.

* * *

**Act 1, Scene 4 – _Split Paths_**

Meanwhile, in a Jeep rocketing over the desert sands, a trio of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents discovered the first hints of what had transpired.

Underground, all was quiet, the fighting long over. The Captain’s head start had already put nearly forty miles between them.

Hopping out of the backseat, Coulson declared, “He’s still down there.”

Fury started, “He ran—” but Coulson said:

“I’m not talking about Tut.” A beat. “Look at the prints.” There were Iron boots imprinted on the sand, but none returning.

In the Jeep, anguished, Hill said, “No way he made it out.”

“Only one way to _find_ out,” Coulson reminded softly. “Go on. I’ll catch up.” He smiled wryly.

Hill ordered, “Stay put. We’ll circle back in nine hours if we don’t catch a trail.”

“Make it twelve,” Coulson insisted, holding up a canteen. “Go. Hurry.”

The Jeep took off.

* * *

**Act 1, Scene 5 – _Into the Tomb_**

Clint Barton hauled his mule up, ordering, “Steady.” He didn’t quite trust the beast, so he staked it in the sand, which still seemed precarious, but it had worked before. 

Finding the site was easy enough—riding when he felt so worked over was hell, and the jostling to his broken hand was agony, but he made it, all right; was going to tear Fury a new one for telling him to _sit this one out_ , to hell with that—but the quiet made him deeply uneasy. Of course, the Jeep crew had a grand head start of maybe half an hour, and as he descended, fast as he dared, into the darkness, feeling his way around, he noticed a flashlight below, flattening himself against the wall.

Then he heard, calm and familiar, “Barton?”

He exhaled hard. “Thank God,” he called back. “Coulson? That you?” Hurrying to join Phil, Clint ordered, “Flash the—” Phil swung the light around, and Clint jolted, hard, when he saw the body facedown on the stairs, but it was black-suited, the tentacled red monster clear as day on its arm. _Hydra_. Not the Captain, either, he reflected ruefully.

Skirting around it, he found three more bodies on the descent, joining Coulson on the fourth underground level, his expression incredibly sober in the narrow, overpowering flashlight.

“What the hell happened?” Clint asked softly.

“No idea,” Phil admitted, voice clear but tone devastated. “Not a damn clue.” Venturing forward, keeping the flashlight emphatically pointed at the open doorway, he added, “Gun up. Could be mummies.”

Glad that the King had left his gun hand intact—instructive, he’d called it; _instructive for what?_ —Clint raised his hand gingerly and followed Phil deeper into the improvised tomb in search of the living among the dead.

* * *

**Act 1, Scene 6 – _Buried Alive_**

They found Stark, all right—trapped underneath a collapsed floor, wheezing audibly in panic, nearly blasting them to Kingdom Come even as Phil shouted, “Stark, _Stark!_ It’s us! It’s us!”

Clint understood his panic, even if he shared Phil’s dismay at nearly being blown to pieces. Somehow, in the middle of the fight, the whole floor had collapsed, set off by a grenade, maybe, and the only sign that there had once been a fifth underground level was a flailing red hand punched through the fourth floor. It had clawed a narrow opening through which some of the rest of the suit was visible, insectoid, arthropodal— _writhing_. Clint’s skin crawled to see it.

Stark was clearly in a special kind of hell and Clint couldn’t blame him, swallowing in dismay at the sight, wondering how in the goddamn hell they were going to get him out without heavy machinery, dreading the pronouncement that they’d have to leave and come back with—what, exactly? They were more than fifty feet underground; a forklift was out of the question, even a crane would be hard-pressed. Stark fired another shot at them, like _that_ would help, and after the burst cooled Clint dropped his gun and grabbed his hand, firmly, stilling it, insisting as loudly as he could, “Hey, hey, it’s all right! We’re here.”

Help has arrived, he thought grimly, wondering how they were help, _exactly_ , if they couldn’t actually _do_ anything. At least Stark had a chance—he wondered how many other bodies were down there that weren’t even putting up a fight anymore, that never had a chance in the first place. It seemed deeply wrong for him to rest with the scum of the earth, with the beetles of _Hydra_ , and the conviction to get him out was overpowering. “We’ve got you,” he insisted loudly, nearly shouting himself hoarse, needing to be heard through metal and stone and steel and whatever came between them. “All right? Gonna get you out, real quick.”

Phil looked at him, holding his flashlight, gun still on his belt, looking like he wished he could use magic more than he’d ever wished before, and Clint shared the sentiment, but wishes weren’t horses and beggars couldn’t ride. There was only one option, really, and it was easy enough. He ordered Phil, “Start digging.” 

Phil didn’t hesitate, wedging the flashlight into a rock crevice and _hauling_ , scraping his hands bloody in seconds and Clint gritted his teeth as the pressure kicked up on his hand, wishing he could help but knowing what he was doing _was_ help, it was sanity in the darkness. “C’mon. C’mon!” he shouted, like Phil could overcome nature that way, and Phil, he went _at it_ , hauling like there was a pot of gold down there that held the keys to life, liberty, and happiness, and he had ten minutes to get to it.

Phil worked up a sweat, bleeding himself on the rocks, but he didn’t give in, and as soon as they had a shoulder worked almost free, Clint was wedging himself nearly in the hole, curving both arms around the biggest pile of rocks he could, heaving with all his might even as Stark grabbed his shirt with a bruising hand, trying to haul him back down, and Phil pulled him back up, helping him clear the rocks, and finally, _finally_ , they got his head and shoulders—facedown, no wonder the bastard was terrified, he was trapped with one arm extended backwards, his sole connection to the living world left to him—partially free. 

“Almost, almost!” Clint shouted, panting so hard it hurt, hauling stone like it was his job, like it was his mission, Stark’s grip on his shirt slipping in the frenzy but then he was getting enough free to jam his hands underneath the suit, howling in agony as it lit up his broken hand like fire and ice but digging it deeper, c’mon, _c’mon_ , he just needed a _hold_ , and then he had enough of one to start hauling, up, up, and away.

Start to finish, it took almost forty minutes to get from one red hand to the entire creaking, slightly crumpled metal torso folding upward, an agonized noise crowding out of Clint’s chest even as Phil hauled on his back and Stark planted his one free hand and shoved with all his might, breaking his torso free like a concrete block escaping the mold. 

“Got it, got it,” Clint congratulated, wheezing, and Stark folded forward but he didn’t let go, howling again as it crushed his hand, but he held on even as Phil scrambled under him, around them, nearly shoving himself headfirst into the pit just to manipulate the stones still pinning Iron Man’s legs to the collapsed floor.

It was impossibly slow going, and through the blinding agony in his own hands, Clint could feel the blind panic coursing like a tidal wave through Stark, holding on and insisting, “Almost, almost!” 

Then, suddenly, he felt the stones shift, and Stark scrambled and it was all Clint could do to get out of the _way_ , to make sure nothing collapsed over them as Stark pushed and clawed and heaved his way free, grabbing onto Clint like a buoy, nearly hauling him into the hole as Clint laughed, just _laughed_ , and said, “Fuck yeah! We’re out!”

Stark didn’t wait for more than that, curving a strong metal arm imperiously around his back, and then fisting the front of Phil’s shirt and, with a burst of power, lunging skyward. Phil screamed in terror, vertigo. Clint jammed his face in the collar of the suit and pleaded with any powers that were listening that it had enough power to get to the top _before_ giving out.

And then, all at once, they were _free_. Bursting onto the brilliant white sands, blinding in the extreme, and Clint jammed his eyes closed but it was too late, the starburst light incinerating, making it impossible to make out the scenery. He heard the mule _haw_ loudly, felt Stark land abruptly, awkwardly, and then he was keeping Stark from pitching forward, Phil face-planting nearby, letting out a nervous chuckle as he pushed himself to his knees with a breathless, “I’m okay, I’m okay.”

“Sure as shit better be,” Clint huffed, straining to keep Stark in the suit upright. He wheezed, “Little help here?”

Phil tripped on the way up, and it would have been funny—was a _little_ funny, Clint could admit, eyes watering, barking a hoarse little laugh as Phil tried, like a drunken fool, to regain his bearings, finally collapsing against Stark’s opposite side, holding him up. “Well,” Phil huffed, in his usual impression of cheerfulness. “Well, that went we—”

With a slight _hiss_ , Clint heard the faceplate open before Stark leaned forward and vomited, thankfully nothing red, and he averted his gaze and said, “You had to say it.”

“To be fair,” Phil said, duly cowed, “I didn’t get to.”

Stark wheezed, “I _quit_.”

And Clint laughed, laughed like it was going out of style, rubbing his back with his one good hand and saying, “Nah, that’s how you _know_ you’re in it. Spunk up. We got a wild goose chase ahead of us.”

Shuddering and straightening slowly, Stark, looking decidedly green, wiped a metal hand across his mouth and husked, “He wasn’t there.”

“Well, damn,” Clint said, but Phil just replied:

“Be amazed how fast Fury is on four wheels. If anyone can catch him, he will.”

Stark drew in a breath, gave a full-body shudder, and then said, “Yeah? Then what?”

Exchanging a look with Phil, Clint said, “He’s more of a track-and-tag type, but he’ll bag if he can.”

Huffing a humorless noise, letting out a horrible noise like he might retch before pulling himself together, Stark said, “Good luck.”

“We’re the cavalry,” Clint added. “With Romanoff still—”

Sighing deeply, sounding like it was pulled from the soles of his feet, Stark said, “I envy her more by the hour. Fine. _Fine_. Tag and bag.” Looking between them, he scowled and said, “Make mention of this, I’ll kill you.”

“You’re welcome,” Clint said dryly, making him actually flinch, putting the mask back down.

Looking between them, armor on, he added behind the mask, “I’ve got three hours of flight time left. So. The real question is—who’s taking the mule, and who’s coming with me?”

Clint looked at Phil, half-expecting him to say, _Go home._ But Phil just said, “Sounds like a job for the Avengers, doesn’t it?” Smiling, he walked over to the mule, and insisted, “I’ll be fine. I’ll touch base. Bring the real guns,” he added, very seriously, as he hopped up onto its back. “Godspeed.” Then he turned and trotted off, without so much as a _by your leave_.

Looking at Stark, Clint shrugged and patted at his belt, frowning when he realized he’d left his gun downstairs. “I’ve got one,” Stark said, metallic. “Let you borrow it, if it comes to that.” 

Holding out an arm, Stark added, “Better clench up, Legolas.”

* * *

**Act 1, Scene 7 – _Notes on a King_**

“King Tut” was born on February 11, 1945. 

That was the day when, on a daring combat mission in the Ural Mountains, Captain America plummeted 947 feet off a moving train into a river. He was found by the hive, downstream, two days later. They brought him to their lair and restored him, dosing him with enough drugs to keep him barely alive and barely in pain. Thus he remained in a numb state of unreality, unable to recall anything before the accident, for years after. And once he could—it was nothing more than an ugly, strange dream of poverty, privation, and never being enough.

They told him his name was S.R. and he was a Captain in the German Army. Out of respect, he was to repeat the phrase _Hail Hydra_ to all of his comrades. It meant nothing. It was simply a statement of deference to his commander-in-chief, Der Führer, who wanted to unite his entire country under one principle: _united we stand, divided we fall_.

It was a very reasonable claim during a very tumultuous time of war. To see the brutality of war, to see the madness that ensued without _order through pain_ , to see these things was to become an instant believer. _United we stand, divided we fall_.

To repeat the phrase, _hail hydra_ , was to repeat the mantra. Those who did not repeat the phrase, _hail hydra_ , were dissenters. Dissenters were dangerous. Dissenters, _hail hydra,_ would fall.

After, _hail hydra_ , six months of reprogramming, he began to forget that he came from another nation, that his uniform, _hail hydra_ , was once red, white, and blue, that it stood for freedom, that it stood for anything other than, _hail hydra_. That there was anything other than _order through pain_. 

So he drank with them. He ate with them. He spoke their language as his primary tongue; he spoke to children, to matrons, to soldiers, to leaders. He was cordial and emblematic and polite. He was powerful, too, but he was predictable, and loyal, and a defender of the just. They showed him the people he was protecting. Back to him, they repeated one phrase: _Hail hydra_. It all made sense.

Order came through pain. And as, _hail hydra_ , he became more cognizant, he became more convinced that this, _hail hydra_ , was the only order that would last. There was disorder and agony on the other side. They tried to call him back, to tell him things he did not want to hear. 

So his family showed him _pain is the route to all immunity to suffering; when you can overcome pain you can overcome evil, do you understand? Pain is the route to all immunity to suffering; when you can overcome pain you can overcome evil, you will never be vulnerable, you will never be bowed, you will never be forced, you will plant yourself firm, you will do what is right every time, do you understand?_

_I understand. (hail hydra)_

You will do what is right every time. They will restore you when you are hurting to good health, will drag you in from the storm, and then break you again against the rocks on the shore so you will never grow immune to what the living must endure, that you may never grow to be above the living, the low-cut. And then, when they offer to fix you, when they extend kindness, you will break the hand that offers it, to show, _I am not a dog to be fed or coerced or controlled_ , and they will say, _Yes_ , and you will hear ( _hail hydra_ ).

You will do what is right every time—what _he_ says every time, whoever he is. Not a _she_ —a woman should know her place, a matriarch should stand beside and not before her patriarch, it is the beginning of civil disobedience, what _he_ says is your bond, the only currency you understand, _do you understand?_

_I understand. (hail hydra)_

A good matriarch will never even desire to stand above the patriarch of the house, she will bear good children, and those children will grow to serve you and dine with you and sleep in your barracks and take up your arms, and you will know them by ( _hail hydra_ ), and they will die for you, because that is _order through pain_.

And someday you will be called to die for _him_ , your leader, your commander, your next-in-line, your _father_ , and that is order through pain: you are given your shield, and your blessings, and your marks, and your sword to fight, and then it is all taken away without warning or question or remorse, because you can always be made low again, the only thing separating the strong from the weak is—

 _Endurance to pain_.

And after seventy years, the man who walked, immortalized by the magic in his veins, desensitized to the deaths of his loved ones by the mistress of _time_ and three hive fathers, dead to fate, dead to fate, dead to damnable fate, and A.P. would surely follow, but _he_ would remain loyal, he would prove how loyal he was because _he_ was the Supreme Leader, he was the hand that guided the organization, that rallied the world under one mantra, that _protected_ _order_ through _pain_ , that walked into any room on Earth and made the _low-cuts_ and _high-cuts_ alike salute in _unified_ submission—this man, who once was named Steve Rogers, was the one and only S.R., the mythical “King Tut.”

The ruthless, bloodthirsty Captain Hydra.

* * *

**Act 1, Scene 8 – _Scarab in the Desert_**

This was the man that Tony Stark found in the desert, half-buried in the sand like the scarab he’d come to represent, disappearing and reappearing at will. 

He seemed oddly human, curled up on his side to make himself smaller, his jet-black uniform damnably visible against the beige stone. He’d clearly made an effort to bury himself more thoroughly, but given up partway through, whether convinced no one would find him or simply exhausted, it was hard to say. One way or another, with Barton breathing, “Holy shit” beside him, he felt his heart pounding in his chest, every narrow impulse of _run, run and never return_ singing in his veins.

He announced, very calmly, “I’m gonna set you down.”

Barton said immediately, “Stark—”

“I need both hands,” Tony said, voice firmer than iron. He only needed one, actually—if Captain Hydra was hewn of mortal flesh and bone, which he was. Even legend could only take things so far, and they’d all seen him _bleed_ on TV. Instead of shattering the illusion of invincibility, it seemed only to enhance it. 

_This is the man who will not die_. He’d already maintained a fountain-of-youth visage for over sixty years; perhaps he was simply immortal, immune to the vices humanity suffered. Hovering five hundred feet above the ground, well outside even the Captain’s refined hearing range, Tony said, “I’m gonna set you down over there, and then this happens fast.”

The sobering reality was immediately apparent. “Stark,” Barton began.

Tony said, “Get it out now. Once we get lower, I need radio silence.”

“Stark,” repeated Barton, incredulous, alarmed. “You have to take the shot.” It was plain that _he_ wanted to take the shot, but he didn’t have a gun to do it with. He couldn’t seem to fathom why Tony _wouldn’t_ take a headshot, why he wasn’t setting Barton down to do just that.

 _This is gonna happen fast_.

Like hell it would—if there was one thing Tony knew, it was that startling an animal from its lair was never a good idea, and even an improvised burrow in the sand counted as a safe haven for the catatonic creature below. _Just kill it_. But it wasn’t an it—not really, never _had_ been, this was _King Tut_. He wanted to bring the bastard in, _alive_.

It felt beyond anticlimactic to shoot him in his sleep—it felt morally wrong, like he was disappointing the people of Earth if he deprived them of their one opportunity to properly crucify Captain Hydra.

No: he was going to do this right. For the people of Earth. Not for Captain _Fuck You and Everything You Stand For_.

“I’ll take the shot,” he said, a perfect lie, and began the descent.

Getting the memo, Barton kept his mouth shut, but he didn’t seem remotely happen about it, left hand gripping the metal as tightly as he could. Not very—even battered after his shudder-inducing cave-in down below, it didn’t yield to human hands. Not so with a super-soldier—and fuck, this was stupid, this was _suicidal,_ this was—

 _Happening now_.

He set Barton down, didn’t even pause for breath as he accelerated sharply, swept forward, and in one fast movement, pounced on his prey.

People who imagined themselves overpowering tigers forgot one monumental logistical problem: a tiger was not merely a predatorial animal with disconcertingly fast reflexives, intimidating roars, killing teeth, and eviscerating claws: it was also an overwhelmingly _huge_ predator, one that quickly transformed any would-be captor into quick prey, with a bite to the jugular for good measure. An apex predator _had no predators_ , and a tiger was an apex predator. A tiger was bad news.

He would rather have tackled a tiger. Any day of the week. Tigers, at least, were angry, and fast, and scary. They weren’t _human_.

He had no sooner landed, grabbed, and locked on then Captain Hydra had rolled them, and if he hadn’t already locked the suit into place, it would have been a very swift decapitation in the desert, a startlingly anticlimactic end for _him_. Trapped like a gator in a net, Captain Hydra thrashed violently, hard enough that Tony could feel it pounding bruises against him through the suit, and, driven to desperation, he laid both palms on his roiling back and let off twin repulsor blasts.

It only seemed to piss him off, writhing more energetically, like he could simply _thrash_ his way out of a full body lock, and Tony managed a burst of shoulder thrust with J.A.R.V.I.S.’s help, rolling them even as Captain Hydra clawed and ripped, beginning to dig _into_ the armor, and _this is bad, this is bad, this is very, very bad_.

Realizing that he was less than three seconds away from catastrophe, he upped the ante to electric shock, deciding if _heat_ wasn’t enough of a deterrent—he could literally _see_ smoke radiating from the back of the suit, and while he wasn’t above badly burning the bastard, he didn’t just want to keep poking him with a stick—maybe he could physically shock him into submission. He ordered, “Give me the strongest nonlethal you got, J.!”

J. sure as _fuck_ delivered—Captain Hydra jolted like a fish on a line before going completely rigid, and Tony managed to roll them, making sure the armored legs were _locked_ before switching one arm to a chokehold. Captain Hydra’s right arm twitched and shivered, but it didn’t move properly, didn’t pivot, muscles in overdrive, and Tony wrapped an Iron arm around his throat and locked _it_ in place, tight as he could.

It was borderline torture—one arm crushing his chest, the other compressing his throat, the full Iron weight pressing him facedown into the shifting sand, rigid body still shivering spasmodically, there was no way in hell he could draw breath, and _that’s the fucking plan, Stark;_ he couldn’t believe he was getting chickenshit _now_ , when he _literally had Captain Hydra in his grasp_ —and it went on for almost five minutes before, all at once, Captain Hydra, the indomitable will, went utterly, disarmingly limp.

Tony panicked—just a little, but he wasn’t expecting it, and so he loosened his grip, and Captain Hydra _bucked_ him off, launching him backwards. Not wasting a moment on breath, Captain Hydra lurched to his feet, then fell forward, still fucked up from the shock, and Tony thought, _Good move, J._ Switching to a repulsor blast, Tony knocked him down again, right on his front, and, using distance to his advantage, hit him with another repulsor blast, making him twitch, jerk in the sand, nearly burying himself in it, shaking hard. It seemed—wrong. Like watching an animal with a severed spinal cord try to get up and run.

“Surrender,” he called out, and that, if anything, only seemed to infuriate Captain Hydra more, who lunged, _lunged_ to his feet, and Tony shot him again, but he was braced for it, hunching on his knees, weathering the storm, before rocking fully to his feet and lurching off, staggering almost drunkenly. Making a deeply exasperated noise, Tony said, “Give me another shock, J.” Then he leapt up, and flew the short distance after him, aware of, in a distant corner, Barton running towards them, catching up. 

Then Captain Hydra whirled and grasped _him_ by the throat, hard enough that the metal creaked dangerously, and Tony shoved both metal hands against his chest and delivered a full shock.

He saw dark blue eyes roll back and watched the mighty fall backwards, collapsing without a sound.

Hurriedly, he reached in his utility belt, grabbing a carbon-fiber rope he used for tying things he never wanted to come apart together, and clumsily set about getting him trussed without taking his eyes off his face, still and silent and slack with unconsciousness.

His chest wasn’t moving.

Holy hell, his chest wasn’t moving.

Tony didn’t know why he did it—he could hear Barton shouting at him in the distance, _What the fuck are you doing?_ —but he was doing it anyway, one metal hand over the other, a hundred beats a minute, thump, thump, thump, thump, manually pumping the blood of the man who’d spilled more of it on the floor than any agent his caliber, vitalizing the monster made flesh, the man who his father had spent a lifetime trying to kill to make the world a better place. _I killed him_ , he thought, pulsing away, thump, thump, thump, _I killed him. I killed King Tut_.

Thump, thump, thump, thump— _come back to me, come back to me, come back—_

“Stark!” Barton roared, trying to shove him away, stop it, _stop it_ , but he wouldn’t be, refused to be, and then—the most hated man alive gasped, a thin, reedy sound, and J.A.R.V.I.S. confirmed:

“Secondary life signs detected.”

 _What the hell,_ he thought, rocking back onto his metal heels in shock even as Barton shouted at him words he did not hear, _did we just do?_

He was aware, in a dim, unimportant way, of trussing up Captain Hydra, tying him up so tightly even a contortionist would cry, and then piling him over a shoulder, utterly mute behind the mask, able to offer no explanation. _I didn’t mean to kill him. I just wanted to stop him._

And he had. He had, at last, brought the man, the myth, the killing legend to his knees.

He told Barton, “We got him.”

Barton blew out a breath, steaming, “ _We_ ,” and finally huffed, “Yeah. We did.” Then, sternly, he added, “Take him back. Now.”

“But—”

“ _Now_.”

* * *

**Act 1, Scene 9 – _Second Thoughts_**

It was odd, flying with the world’s most dangerous man slung over his shoulder. 

Sort of like carrying a sheep away for the slaughter. That was what he was—except he was no sheep, he was a _wolf_. He was a _wolf_ who killed _wolves_. He snapped their necks and drank their blood, emblemized _monster_ in every way. He was pure, unadulterated evil. Looking at Barton, bruised and worn, there was no way not to see the pain he had inflicted, casually and indifferently, on so many others. The dozens he had killed. The hundreds he had tortured in some way, shape, or form. 

There was nothing about this man that would be missed except the dozens of lives he had taken away from the world, the acts of war and atrocities he had committed. And, Tony could admit, in the air where no one could condemn his soft heart, perhaps he could miss the last hours when Captain America had lingered in an icy riverbed, awaiting the worst kind of rescue.

 _Hell of a world to wake up to_.

He’d made every choice in clear conscience, in cold blood, for seven decades, nearly four score. He was not a cog in the machine; he was an active participant, an _orchestrator_ , the top of the chain, the one that every Hydra agent _kneeled_ to, the beloved Captain Hydra. Without him, there would be a mourning. Without him, they would lose _their_ Captain America, just as the rest of the world has lost its seventy years ago.

It was a service to humanity to destroy the abomination, to rid the world of evil personified. To finally put his head on a staff and show them all that they could sleep at night. The wolf would be slaughtered at last. And the flock would be safe again. 

_To hell with Hydra_.

And it would start here.

* * *

**End of ACT 1**

* * *

**ACT 2**

**TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS**

* * *

**Act 2, Scene 1 – _Captain’s Log_**

_My brothers and sisters,_ Captain Hydra thought, sitting in a cell, _do not lose faith. Do not lose hope. Hydra remains dauntless. Hydra is the beating heart inside all of our breasts that shall never abandon us, no matter how the world may close in. When you are at your lowest, remember your vows. I will serve without fear. I will live in sole betterment of the hive. I will breed good, strong children to take my place. I will yield with no exception to my father. I will look after the one nation of this world, and I will sow the seeds necessary to bring about order through pain. Though it may take a flood to wipe the slate of the Earth clean, what will remain will be pure, and ready to be sown again. Be still, and know that there is nothing they can ever do to you to hurt you unless you choose to suffer it._

Looking through the mirrored glass at his invisible audience, he whispered not for their ears but for those of his children, “Hail Hydra.”

* * *

**Act 2, Scene 2 – _First Impressions_**

“He really grows on you, doesn’t he?” Dr. Bruce Banner mused, looking decidedly green.

“Just wanna snuggle up to him,” Tony deadpanned, sitting with a bag of ice over his head, nursing a stunning headache. “Can’t imagine a cuddlier—J., put me on speaker. _Cap_ , buddy. This is not a live broadcast. It’s just me, my friend Brucey—say hi, Bruce—” Bruce paled, shrinking away from the wall as, with eerie accuracy, Captain Hydra honed in on him, even with the mirrored glass, “and this lovely glass wall. Be happy to get you a drink, though, if you feel like saying something useful. Locations of your friends, mayhaps? Secret Hydra plans? You know—” Tony made a point of leaning over, ignoring Bruce’s disappointed noise as he fetched a bottle of vodka from beneath his seat and planted it squarely on the table, “I’ve got a nice bottle of Everclear if you wanna make the most of your last hours on Earth.”

“Hail Hydra,” Captain Hydra repeated.

“ _Go Fish_ ,” Tony replied, muting him. “God, what a sweetheart?” he huffed, cracking open the seal and taking a gulp of Everclear that nearly burned his throat dry. “H’oh fuck, I forgot what a—kick that has. Jesus take the wheel.” He held out the bottle to Bruce, who did, looking at him in great disapproval. “Fuck you, I spent seventeen hours in the air, twenty-two hours on the ground hunting the world’s most wanted terrorist, basically _for free_ , I might add—”

“That bounty isn’t free,” Bruce pointed out, dry as a sandstorm. “Though, I can’t imagine _Tony Stark_ needs it.”

“I do, actually. I’m never going to sleep at night—it’ll be the start of my therapy bills.” And he was only half-kidding, falling out of his seat when he looked over and saw Captain Hydra right up against the glass, tapping on it three times, pointedly. Swallowing hard—it was chilling, despite the fact that the glass was strong enough to resist a _Hulk_ —he flicked the mic back on and said, “Yes, dear?”

Captain Hydra looked right at him, piercing gray-blue eyes unerringly fixed. “Where is Nick Fury?”

“Oh,” Tony said, twirling in his chair, feeling the Everclear settling warmly in his belly as he pitched the icepack carelessly aside. “An actual question? I’m dreaming, aren’t I? Except if I was, something horrible would happen—now.” He paused, waiting for the glass to shatter and Captain Hydra to leap at them like a bat in the night, before shrugging and continuing, “Amazing—so, Nick says, and I quote, _I will give that bastard the time of day, when he gives me the location of Alexander Pierce, to a mile_. End quote.”

With surprising calm, Captain Hydra replied, “I don’t know where Alexander Pierce is.”

Bruce said, “Really?”

Tony made a _don’t engage the hostile_ noise, reminding the floor, “Fury mentioned you were an excellent social manipulator.”

“I can see that,” Captain Hydra said, in a calm, conversational manner, moving along the glass until he was standing right in front of Tony, his expression neither friendly nor hostile, simply . . . present. Like he had forgotten what real emotions were, and only expressed them if absolutely necessary. “Tell me, A.—Stark. What makes it hard to sleep at night?”

Spinning slowly in the chair, Tony said, “Oh, lots of things. You, actually. Your little terrorist organization has done a bang-up job making the world a worse place.” There was a flash of something in Captain Hydra’s expression that he couldn’t quite read as, on the next revolution, it had already vanished. “Although maybe I should be thankful, you’ve given me a chance to privatize world peace. Can’t sell cops without robbers, eh?”

Nothing. No smile, no hint of shared amusement, just the same rigid expression belying the same commanding presence. After sedating him briefly using top-notch _like to see the bastard shake this off_ super-tranquilizers to get him to the states, they’d stripped him properly of his identity, giving him a standard orange prisoner’s uniform instead of the more familiar all black Hydra uniform. Fury didn’t want the bastard too comfortable, and the orange outfit was meant to distance him from loyalties. 

It was something special to see Captain Hydra, arguably the most feared man in the world, shoeless, in a bright orange uniform, looking at him not with angry vengeance but blank attention, like he was listening and would make his move as soon as Tony turned around.

Pointedly, Tony turned around, keeping his back to him. Nothing happened.

 _Fucking got you, you bastard_.

“Dog days are over,” he said aloud, propping his feet up on the little coffee table in front of them. “Your reign’s done. You’re lucky, you know. We’re the good guys. We don’t drown people in boxes.” He flicked a gaze over his shoulder, gazing Captain Hydra’s reaction, but Captain Hydra didn’t flinch. If he was afraid of being drowned in a box, he was as reactive to the statement as he might have been to: _And on Wednesday, we wear pink_. “We prefer lethal injection, maybe the firing squad. That seems lovely, doesn’t it? One for everyone you killed?”

“Tony,” Bruce said, pale as a sheet, and Tony softened, sighing.

“It’s weird, talking to a killer, you know?” He twirled to face Captain Hydra, who hadn’t moved an inch, watching him patiently. “It’s weird. Is it weird for you? Talking to civvies?”

“You have blood on your hands.”

Tony felt every hair on the back of his neck stand up, the chilling pronouncement far too close to home. “Excuse you, _I_ killed in—” He paused, rocked once in the chair, collecting his thoughts. “I was tortured for three months in a cave by criminals, what did that family of four do to you? Huh?”

“I only killed men my father deemed unworthy,” Captain Hydra said. That simple.

“My dad was more into chess,” Tony said, tit-for-tat. “He _really_ wanted to nail your ass to a wall.” Bouncing to his feet, he sauntered over to him, only the bullet-proof, bazooka-proof, _Hulk couldn’t smash his way through it-_ proof glass between them. If they both reached out, there would be just four inches of space separating them. It was a different kind of danger. 

“He practically made you, did you know that?” Tony said, speaking into the filtered air between them, air conditioned, sterile, no hint of the _I will eat you alive_ desert sand, filling his lungs, caving in his chest until he could barely breathe, until he had to speak to get it out. “And then he had to kill you. You were like the family pet to him. Then you went and got rabies. Now we have to put you down.” He put a hand on the glass, steadying himself, the words bubbling out in a weird mixture of honesty and exhaustion and drugs, never mix alcohol and painkillers but hell if his head wasn’t killing him some kind of way after _everything_. “We can cure rabies now, you know. Fix you right up. Model citizen.”

For the first time, Captain Hydra looked at him with something other than disinterested quiet: there was real, genuine, raw—not fear, not anger, but some middle ground, a wild flash of outrage blitzing through his eyes before he growled in a register so low Tony almost didn’t hear it, “I am not your dog.” The irony of the statement—said with hand curled in nearly a claw against the glass, teeth baring in the briefest hint of a snarl, a feral edge to his posture—was not lost on Tony, who huffed, in amused dismissal. 

With sudden discontent, Captain Hydra turned and walked away, and Tony called after him, “Aww, did I hurt your feelings? Bruce, look, he has feelings. Don’t be sad. C’mere.” Whistling like he was calling a shy stray, he added, “Don’t get all sulky, that’s no good for anyone. Your trial starts as soon as they figure out how many counts of murder they wanna draw up, buddy. You wanna die before you’ve made a friend? Huh?” Still whistling, increasingly more abrasive, he added, “Here, puppy, come get a treat. I’ll be your friend.” 

Standing in a corner, back to Tony, Captain Hydra didn’t make a sound. He sure looked like a sour puppy. Bruce didn’t say a word, completely flabbergasted, as Tony clumsily fisted the bottle and hauled down another big gulp. “Hey, puppy, say something nice and I’ll let you have some. Huh? Huh?”

Captain Hydra didn’t respond. Tony gripped the neck of the bottle, said, “You know what?” And threw it against the glass, shattering it. “Fuck you. That’s what. You’re a slimy son of a bitch and—”

“Tony,” Bruce finally said, and gentle arms were on his shoulders, pulling him away. “C’mon.”

“Don’t deserve that serum!” Tony shouted at him. “My father’s shield—where’d the fuck you put it, Cap? You lost it! You lost it!”

Slowly, almost unwittingly, Captain Hydra turned to him. There was a strange look in his eyes, almost—but not quite—fear. “I never lost anything.”

“Where is it?” Tony demanded, even as Bruce guided him away. “Where’d you lose it?”

“I did not _lose_ it,” Captain Hydra repeated, looking ill for the first time, expression _gray_.

Tony couldn’t hold back, emotions boiling over, demanding existence before it was too late to be said, before he was shouting at a tombstone for vengeance: “I want that fucking shield! Before you fry!”

“ _Tony!_ ” Bruce barked. “That’s _enough_.”

Captain Hydra looked perfectly blank again, his expression calm as still waters. Watching them, he said simply, “Hail. _Hydra_.”

Bruce hauled him out of the room, but Tony didn’t resist him, didn’t look away from Captain Hydra until the doors shut, and then he just said, “Fuck.” 

Bruce started, “Jesus, Tony.”

But Tony just said, “I think I need to go lie down.”

And Bruce let him go.

* * *

**Act 2, Scene 3 – _Peace Offering_**

“This doesn’t have to have an unhappy ending,” Phil Coulson said diplomatically, standing in front of the bulletproof glass with his hands folded behind his back.

Captain Hydra was looking decidedly gaunter—he’d been in their captivity for three days and, to Tony’s knowledge, had yet to eat a bite. Not that they’d skimped on food; he’d been offered better helpings than most New Yorkers enjoyed on the regular, which disgusted Tony to no end, who thought _fresh roadkill seems like a fair dietary supplement_ for the man whose most common response was a stout _Hail Hydra_. 

It was like his preconditioned third answer: Yes, No, and _Hail Hydra_.

“Actually,” went on Phil Coulson, looking at the dog standing in the corner, back rigidly to them, so still he might have been dead if he was not standing, “you’d be far from the first person we’ve rehabilitated.”

“Makes a good deal,” Tony chimed in, lounging in his usual chair, benumb to the world on painkillers—sans alcohol, this time. A twenty-hour cat nap had almost set him aright, and he was feeling much, much more charitable as he added pleasantly, “C’mon, ol’ buddy. Work with us here. Nobody wants to—”

“Mr. Stark,” Coulson said, calm but firm enough to convey the point. _Please let me handle this_.

Waving a hand to clear the floor—grateful that Captain Hydra had his back to them and did not see the gesture—Tony waited for Coulson to resume.

“You’ve been through a lot,” Coulson said, surprising Tony, his tone not soft but plain, unembellished. “You know, a dossier like that, it comes with a story. I imagine it’s one you’d rather not tell. But we’d listen, if you wanted to tell it.” 

The silence was loud. Tony fidgeted audibly as it dragged on, even though Coulson stood patiently, unmoving, waiting for something to happen. 

Wondering if they would be timed out before Captain Hydra changed positions—most people seemed to last about thirty minutes before being summarily unnerved; Tony had survived for two hours and counting when Coulson arrived—Tony forced himself not to interject as it dragged on.

It never broke.

“Well,” Coulson said at last, friendly, undeterred, not the least bit disappointed despite the abject failure of the gesture, “it’s just a thought. We do have good counselors, you know. People who are here to listen. It might seem strange, after everything you’ve dealt with, but you’re still a person. We’ll treat you like one, until you’re—no longer in our company.” He said it with the littlest shrug, and Tony felt a strange coldness, hearing the truth from a third party. _You’re going to die. And soon_. “We’d like to keep you around, actually. You’re one of a kind. One of our _own_.”

At that, Captain Hydra finally whispered without looking at them, “ _Hail Hydra_.”

Coulson smiled, just a little. “We don’t say that around here,” he said gently, like he was correcting a slur. And it was—the phrase was nails on chalkboard, ugly, a thing that would be punished in any other context. Hell, there was no context it wouldn’t be punished in—Tony itched to mute him, to say, _Well, you can mutter it in silence, till the day you die_ , because they’d won, and it didn’t matter how much he clung to his pride. The mighty had already fallen.

And S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn’t going to let Hydra reclaim their prize. For all Coulson’s overtures of friendship and rehabilitation, unless King Tut had a phenomenal turnaround time, he’d be taking a nice long nap with his pharaonic brethren in the afterlife in very short order. 

They didn’t want to risk a rescue mission or an internal breakout, unlikely as the latter seemed. They were moving the justice proceedings along at a brisk pace. While S.H.I.E.L.D. was too noble for an execution without trial, they were moving rather quickly, doing everything short of working in commercial breaks for the public reports.

Tony almost felt sorry for the unlucky bastard. As despised a name as _Stark_ was, his funeral wouldn’t be a thing of _celebration_. 

He honestly expected fireworks for Captain Hydra’s. 

Looking at the lean figure in the corner of the cell, orange prisoner’s uniform already beginning to hang off his once proud shoulders, the incongruity could not seem more stark.

 _Behold: your wolf for the slaughter_.

“Well,” Coulson said, voice still pleasant, “if you do want to talk, just say so. You’re on speaker, so we’ll know.”

“ _Hail Hydra_ ,” Captain Hydra husked again.

“Helpful,” Tony chimed in.

“It’s a start,” Coulson sighed, just a tinge of defeat in his tone, already turning away.

It was only a start, and— _You don’t have that kind of time, pal_ , Tony thought, as Coulson walked off and he lingered, staring at the figure standing in the corner. 

_If you wanna change your tune, it’s now or never_.

He couldn’t believe he was even waiting to see if it happened. It wouldn’t—seventy years of loyalty didn’t evaporate overnight. But he waited, regardless, sifting through his phone while Captain Hydra stood silently in his corner, utterly unengaged.

* * *

**Act 2, Scene 4 – _Good News_**

“Good news,” Fury said, framing it like such, before letting the guillotine blade fall: “His tribunal is in two days.”

Blinking, Tony sat up from where he had been slouched in his chair, looking over at the glass wall, the shiny tint reminding them that Captain Hydra couldn’t see them, only his own soulless reflection. “That was—fast,” he croaked, keeping his voice as flat as possible, grateful he didn’t choke on the words.

“He’s an unusual case,” Fury rumbled, looking at their prisoner with ambivalent eyes. “A time-sensitive one. Nobody wants to sit on this for long. We’re—hoping to move things _along_.” Voice full of molten steel, he added, “He’s hurt a lot of people. Nobody wants this to end badly. Should be a very smooth case.”

“Where do I sign?”

Fury frowned. “For what?”

Tony made a lackadaisical gesture with one hand that felt utterly at odds with the unease twisting in his chest: “For my reward.”

Fury sighed: “It’s never enough for you, is it?”

“No,” Tony said simply.

* * *

**Act 2, Scene 5 – _Last Chance_**

Tony said in a low, almost forbidden voice, “You know, they’ll crucify you. Not on a cross—but in every other way, you’re going to be remembered in a bad way. This is your one chance. You can rewrite history here. Change the game.” Almost feverishly, leaning forward, elbows on knees, he urged the figure behind untinted glass, “Cap. _Rogers_.” 

There was no response to the name. He probably hadn’t heard it in—seventy years? He wouldn’t recognize his own name in that span of time. 

“Cap. _Cap_ ,” he insisted, which made him twitch, a little. The mighty _had_ fallen: rather than standing on his own power, King Tut had rested his forehead against the farthest wall, back to Tony, to his only window to the world, exhaustion plain in the slumped line of his narrowing shoulders. “You were a hero once. You saved people. You saved _thousands_ of people. Don’t you remember that? They made you something you were not, but you were something once, too. You gotta dig deep, buddy. You don’t have time—”

“Hail Hydra,” whispered Captain Hydra to the wall. “Hail. Hydra.”

Exhaling tensely, Tony said, “They’ll crucify you.”

“ _Hail Hydra_.”

“No one remembers _you_ ,” Tony steamed, angry at him, on his _behalf_ , because he remembered, dammit. And he _hated_ that he remembered. “No one fucking remembers Captain America, because of everything you’ve done since, do you get that? Are you happy now? Are you happy now?” Approaching the glass, he pounded a fist on it. “You were a hero! You were a fucking hero! You were better than this! And you gave into them. You became _theirs_.”

“Hail _Hydra_ ,” spat Captain Hydra, both hands on the wall, supporting himself.

“Yeah. Hail to the fucking _King_. Know where your _Darth_ father is? Exactly where you’ll be, once that tribunal rules. Better start singing a prettier song, if you want—”

“Hail _Hydra!_ ” roared Captain Hydra, turning to face him, eyes nearly red, they were so bloodshot, his expression full of nothing, no hatred, no loss, no fear or concern, just utter, stunning emptiness, like a lifeboat with no survivors. “Hail _Hydra!_ Hail _Hydra!_ ”

Fuming himself, Tony smashed his fist into the glass again, making it gong a little, barely noticeable at all, but Captain Hydra just chanted, over and over, rhythmic, louder, louder: _Hail Hydra! Hail Hydra! Hail Hydra!_

“Shut up!” he roared. “You killed them, you bastard! You were _made_ to—”

Captain Hydra’s voice was an unearthly howl, and it didn’t matter what Tony said anymore—he just said the same two words, deafening in volume, like the glass wasn’t there, a physical force that could shove him against the wall and force him to _submit_.

_Hail Hydra! **Hail Hydra!**_

Jerking out of range, he felt a relieved shudder when the doors slid open and a group of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents appeared. Fury was with them, looking supremely unimpressed to find Tony there, to find Captain Hydra in such a state, and Tony—Tony found it hard to watch Captain Hydra, lurching around the cell, clawing at the walls, exhibiting a certain raw animal terror to escape that was utterly thwarted by his surroundings, leaping up with inhuman agility onto flat walls, throwing himself bodily at the glass with uneasy malevolence, each rattling impact seeming more dangerous than the last.

“Sir?” asked one of the agents, and Fury advised:

“Calm him down.”

Tony thought, _Like hell you will_ , for a moment misinterpreting the order, tensing for a fight. But they weren’t sent to subdue him. He thought they would charge the room next door, the room nobody seemed to enter or exit, but they didn’t: instead, the vents suddenly hissed, a purple-gray cloud smoke filling the space.

Captain Hydra abruptly backed away from the walls, looked at the vents, looking at the mirrored windows, eyes rolling briefly, in animal terror, everything about him beyond human reason, beyond human touch. He flung himself at the glass again, and again, and again, thudding impacts that made the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and Tony stand back, but Fury stayed less than a foot from the wall, utterly sure it would not break.

It did not even shiver, in the end, not one tiny crack appearing. Slowly, the violence of his efforts diminished as the air became hazy, almost liquid with it. “Saturation eighty-five-percent,” informed the same S.H.I.E.L.D. agent as before. Captain Hydra weaved visibly, slumping against the glass before lurching away, erratic, in herky-jerky motions, a wind-up toy that had lost all sense of direction. He breathed heavily, raggedly, and limped in circles, like he didn’t know where else to go but couldn’t stop.

Tony couldn’t look away, even though it sat like a rock in his throat to watch him slowly, slowly fold to both knees, hands flexing on them, twitching spasmodically, no hint of surrender despite the pose. It was a meditative pose, a restful pose—were he still and strong, it could have fooled Tony utterly for undiminished strength. But the way he shivered, strained to stay aloft and not pitch to one side, was abundantly clear. It was a losing fight.

Still, he had to breathe the sedative for almost an hour, at a dosage Tony would have defined as _well above lethal_ asked in a hypothetical environment, before abruptly, limply keeling over. He hit the concrete hard, no longer concerned or capable of protecting himself, cracking his head against it, not horribly but hard enough to make Tony wince.

“I think,” Fury said, his voice cool and low but deadly serious, “you should leave, Stark.”

Looking at Captain Hydra in the cell, crumpled unguardedly on his side, so different from the desert yet so same, so alike in how easy it would be to prey upon him, and how he would not stand a chance, and how _you should not care, Tony_ , he nodded once. “Winning idea.”

* * *

**Act 2, Scene 6 – _Silenced_**

They’d leashed their mutt, and muzzled him. It was only fair, Tony thought, even if it made his heart sink to his toes when he walked into his new quarters, complete with stockade-esque interrogation desk, and saw it. The once irreducible King Tut looked like a chained-up dog, blinking languorously at Tony as he entered the cell with his armed escort.

Affixed to the desk with vibranium cuffs and breathing hard, a mask obscuring the lower half of his face, Captain Hydra did not say a word when Tony took a seat in front of him. Tony was not even sure he could speak. It seemed like an oversight, a pronounced one for an interrogation but, he realized with sudden, sour irony, it might not even matter at this stage. 

What was not known to the world at large about Captain Hydra’s crimes? They were well-documented and numerous. If even half of them were half-true, he’d be better off dead. He was to the world nothing more than a parasite, mooching off its resources, spreading his disease, and he needed to be put down before he bit anyone else. He needed to be removed from the pool before he hurt anyone else, no matter how—dull, almost docile he seemed, breathing through the mask, attempting a word that came out, “ _Hnnnn_.”

Tony grimaced. “You just can’t be stopped, can you?”

“ _Haaaa_ ,” Captain Hydra finished in a seething, reedy hiss, crackling a little, sounding like he had some kind of bit in his mouth, maybe. Couldn’t form words right, couldn’t say, _Hail Hydra_ anymore, but he was trying. Tony could hear it in the way he breathed, knew the mask was just S.H.I.E.L.D.’s way of keeping him presentable. It was a smart move—the last thing they needed was a demagogue on TV appealing to the impressionable masses—but it hurt to see. He wasn’t sure it made _them_ look like the good guys, either.

 _We don’t drown people in boxes_.

Utterly involuntarily—driven by human instinct alone, by an impulse to— _do_ something, to act, to help in the midst of plain suffering—because he was suffering, with the very last thing taken from him, stripped even of his voice in this brave new world—Tony Stark reached out and brushed his hand against one of Captain Hydra’s cuffed ones, chained to the desk.

Captain Hydra jerked violently, hard enough to make the whole table groan, straining to free himself, to break loose, to do whatever he had to to put distance between flexing, curling fingertips and Tony’s, already retracted to his lap. “Sorry,” he said, but Captain Hydra paid him no mind, grunting and growling behind the mask, far more animalistic with it than without. He knew it wasn’t Fury’s intention to dehumanize him, to make him seem less—but containing him was an act in dehumanization, because there was no _let me help you_ , no individual left to appeal to. It was only an animal, panicked, stripped raw, loyal to its marrow, and vicious, that remained.

_Let it sleep._

The whisper was terrible, unreal, almost unbearable in its simple command, in how easy it would be to let go of the guilt roiling inside him, in the dread of the day of judgment, at the realization that there was no way out of this, that Captain Hydra was feral and he had to _die_. Not be cuffed and thrown in a cell to starve to death of his own volition. They could force-feed him, but that was its own kind of torture: there was simply no way to keep a human being alive that did not _want_ to be kept alive that did not, in some measure, qualify as torture.

 _Let him sleep_.

Wild with it, with his own inability to be free, Captain Hydra stood up, his full imperious height cowed by his hands still pinned to the table, his feet chained to the legs of his chair. He was making even more desperate noises, and Tony was feeling decidedly awful, longing to be anywhere in the world but here and to be exactly here, to be where he most needed to be, and:

“Hey,” he said, soft, fast, speaking because he needed to, because it was the only thing he could do, “hey, it’s okay. It’s okay. I’ll get you out.” The agent at his side visibly balked, insisting quickly:

“That’s not authorized.”

Ignoring him, Tony reached again for Captain Hydra’s hand, and Captain Hydra let out a scream that was barely human behind the mask, one that made Tony jerk his hands away, burned without heat, watching with a wrench of guilt as the agony of it all became too much, and with twin popping sounds, Captain Hydra dislocated both wrists, then fell backwards, still chained to the underside of the desk.

It was pathetic, really—to see him fall, to see him struggle on his back, and the animal with a severed spinal cord trying to run rarely seemed more apropos as he lay on his back, strangling in his position, one leg somehow mostly free but the other firmly pinned, kicking, thrashing, flailing, doing everything he could with the limited range, with two uncooperating hands, to get _away_. The desk groaned and creaked, cemented to the floor, never designed to be moved. Tony said, “Cut him loose.”

The agent replied, “I can’t.”

_Can’t you see he’s suffering?_

It didn’t matter; a moment later, the entire desk shifted violently, cracked off its foundation, and Captain Hydra dragged it to the far corner of the small room, hall the size of his living cell, like a wall between them.

Tony heard crackling noises, slamming noises, relocating limbs, and flinched. He heard shallow, rapid breathing, muffled and wet through the mask. He thought, _This is wrong_ , and didn’t know why, exactly. 

But Coulson was right: this was one of their _own_.

Decimated, thrown into a fire and burned until he no longer resembled anything like his original red-white-and-blue emblem, he still cowered behind the desk like a man—a man terrified out of his mind, whose only reflexology was self-protection. The desk rattled audibly with the sound of his shaking, masking the future sounds of laughter and jeers and cheering at his own execution. People would hold toasts to the end of the monster that had terrorized them for seventy years.

 _He’s our monster_.

Swallowing hard, he resolved to talk to Fury, as soon as he could feel his feet again, sinking to the floor outside the room, needing to regain his own bearings.

* * *

**Act 2, Scene 7 – _Divorced from the Hive_**

Captain Hydra seethed indiscernibly behind the mask. 

The long, broken hiss, cut off by gulps of breath and raggedy exhales, did not even seem to be an attempt at words, no longer bothering with his ubiquitous phrase. He’d been in their captivity for a grand total of ninety-six hours, and he already seemed more deranged than the prim and proper, black-tie imposter that showed up at parties and threatened to rip hearts out could ever be. It really _was_ an act, Tony realized, as this—this was the real Captain Hydra.

When he was divorced from the mission, separated from the hive, and left to bleed and bleed and bleed on the floor, the only thing left was moaning on the floor in agony, in rage, in fear at every provocation. It was like King Tut had never been, and this creature was all that ever was—this, the beaten dog that wore the mantle and walked the walk but could never fake a man’s good humor, could never pretend to be truly real, _alive_.

He was already dead, in some ways, any hint of a life outside the hive extinguished. Without his mantra, without his uniform and his people and his dreaded killing spree, he seemed utterly lost, like he had already forgotten his entire life, his entire self, who he was. Being deprived the ability to even _utter_ the words, _Hail Hydra_ seemed to have a far more damaging effect than Fury had anticipated—than Tony hoped Fury anticipated, for even he could not have looked at Captain Hydra now and thought, _I am proud of my achievement_.

It felt awful, looking in on him, curled on his side on the floor behind the overturned desk, making long, indeterminate noises behind the mask that could have been anything but were, in all likelihood, the fading prints of the one phrase he knew: _hail hydra. Hail hydra. Hail Hydra_.

Without it—what was Captain Hydra, exactly?

 _Broken_.

It was the only word that came to mind, and as they dosed him with more of the noxious airborne gas, Tony felt like a coward for standing by and doing nothing, aware that it was for his own good—that they were trying to _help_ , even if the pitch of the hisses took on a dangerously high, halting quality. 

They sounded more like whimpers than screams. And they didn’t stop, even when the loud kicking, thrashing, clawing noises behind the desk finally ended.

* * *

**Act 2, Scene 8 – _And on the Last Day_**

On the fourth day of his imprisonment, King Tut arrived for his tribunal, looking like himself in his wicked black uniform.

He looked astonishingly put together, compared to the animal in orange who had been given the black pile of folded clothing hours before. There were no dark rings under his eyes, no hints of the ordeal he had been through, no sign that he had screamed himself unconscious mere hours before; even the red marks from the muzzle had faded away. He was beyond well-kempt: he was _perfect_ , not a hair out of place, moving with a purposefulness and a humanity that seemed to ripple outward. The King was back. The King had _arrived_.

Everything about him was different, his manners, his attitude. With great courtesy, he extended a cuffed hand to the guards, one of whom immediately jutted a stun baton at him with enough violence to put down a bull elephant. The baton wasn’t on, and the King did not flinch from it. He merely smiled, a shark tooth thing that could stop the hearts of mere mortals, and grasped the cool blade, holding it firmly for an uncomfortably long moment before letting it go. The air of quiet reserve to him was its own arrogance, its own _try me_. _Try me, and you will fail, and I will smite you with your own sword_. It was one of his favorite things to do: to kill people with their own weapons. If they had no weapons, bare hands would do.

He had not eaten anything since his arrival nearly six days ago, but he walked under his own power, escorted by an entire squad of guards. There was an outer ring as well, and guards reinforced at every exit, prepared to die for the cause, if that was what it took. King Tut would not walk. Under no circumstances was he to leave the building. If they had to destroy the building to bury him, _so be it_.

There was no question of leaving S.H.I.E.L.D. to a less secure location—they were simply moving him from one cell to staging arena. For the sake of the appearances, they were allowing him to travel under his own power. It was a smart move, even if Tony could _feel_ the temperature drop when the doors opened and, there—in the flesh, reincarnate, walked _King Tut_.

The most wanted man in the world. One of the deadliest assassins in recorded history. 

At six foot two, barefoot, he rose above most of the assembled—towered above all of them, already seated. With his legendary shield on his back, he was said to be truly invincible, Achilles without a heel. He looked oddly restructured without it, like a scarab beetle instead of the knight in shining armor he was meant to be. They’d nicknamed him _King Tut_ for a multitude of reasons, beginning with his tendency to evaporate into the deep, but it was just as fitting that he resembled the scarab, the emblematic desert scavenger. 

He looked surprisingly unimposing—no black claws, no red eyes, no sword dripping blood onto the carpet at his side, none of the legendary evil that dripped from stories at night—and simultaneously every ounce as lethal as he’d been made out to be.

No spectators sat on his side of the room. It only seemed to reinforce how untouchable he was. While not chained to his desk, he was secured with a tether and flanked by the same phalanx of guards. Being a high-risk guard for King Tut was a fast-track to a Medal of Honor. Those who survived the mission, start to finish, would surely receive accolades. There would be future biographies, too— _What was it like, to sit beside the King?_

Ignoring the glass of water in front of him, King Tut folded his hands neatly on the table despite being cuffed together, his entire demeanor lounging, idle, untroubled. He was an extinct breed, a desert lion, ready to strike even in his leisure; nothing about him bespoke cowardice or concern. Even holding his silence, his quiet seemed only to emphasize his commanding presence, how _loudly_ he filled the room, deafening it. Not a goddamn pin dropped.

Finally, one of the Tribunal Judges, a middle-aged Mr. Silo, declared, “Shall we begin?” He waited a moment, perhaps for a declaration, for a sudden burst of demagogic rage, but Captain Hydra did not indulge him.

“Before we proceed,” Mr. Silo went on, looking right at him, as arrested as a cobra to a charmer, all eyes fixed on the object of their attention completely, “is there anything you would like to say, Captain?”

Secure in his position and himself, Captain Hydra rose calmly to his feet, the only man standing beside the handful of reporters, permitted to film for all the world to see.

He pivoted, briefly, taking in the room, locking eyes with all of them and none of them. He did not smile, did not linger, did not single out. Then he looked right at Mr. Silo, up once, then down, and finally dead in the eye, before he stated, “You are about to have a cardiac event.”

If Captain Hydra had announced that he had a bomb stored away in his pocket, the room could not have stirred to greater contained action. A wave of murmurs passed through it. Mr. Silo jerked involuntarily, as though struck across the face, which flushed a moment later—in outrage, in indiscernible cause, it was impossible to say. “That’s enough,” he said hoarsely, clearing his throat in short order. King Tut sat back down, pronouncement made. Face turning steadily redder, Mr. Silo cleared his throat again and declared, “I want the record to show—” Then he gulped and reached for his collar, face blotchy red. “Let the record show—” Gasping, he gripped the bench for support, face paling, eyes wide. 

Radiating control, Captain Hydra reached for his glass of water, hands still contained as the man at the bench let out a wheezing breath. Several people rushed towards him, but King Tut’s assemblage didn’t break, unwavering in their resolve, immovable in their formation. If he caught fire, they were to _stay put_ and burn with him. That was the cost, the risk of guarding the King of the underworld.

As on-hand medics assisted Mr. Silo, King Tut finished his water and turned to the guard on his left. He murmured something that made the man’s eyes go wide, just before the guard on his right jabbed him with a stun baton. Tony barely heard the _crack_ over the panic at the bench, but Captain Hydra didn’t respond to the pain. He merely grasped the baton and held it as it crackled. Then he murmured something else and released the baton. Sitting back, he repeated, just audibly, “Hail Hydra,” and let pandemonium reign.

* * *

**Act 2, Scene 9 – _Repercussions_**

“Cold-reading. Right?”

Standing once again in his reinforced cell, Captain Hydra flicked his glance over at Tony. He paced in slow circles, barefoot but in uniform, stripped of his medals but not of his _valor_ , looking every bit the apex predator Tony Stark had been invited to kill. _You hired me to shoot an elephant. Here I am_. “I can do one, too, right now,” he prophesied flatly, standing on the other side of the glass. “You’re nothing. Underneath that armor, you’re dust. You’re—”

“Hail Hydra,” Captain Hydra husked. His pace did not falter or slow. The soles of his feet gathered dust, whispering against the concrete. Pharaonic, after all.

Lifting the bottle to his lips, Tony taunted, “Look at you. Nothin’ more than a wind-up toy soldier. A machine. An _inhuman_. Why are we trying you? There is nothing left inside you. Tell me, what’s your favorite color? Do you miss the sun? Would you like to be free? Are you afraid to die?”

“Hail Hydra.”

“Are you afraid of water? If we burned you, would you scream?”

“Hail _Hydra_.”

“Say something. Say _something_.”

Looking him dead in the eye, Captain Hydra approached, closing the distance. The wall was mirrored—he could not see Tony. And it was then—and that realization alone that allowed Tony to realize, even in his swerving, inebriated state that, Captain Hydra wasn’t looking right at him. He was _nearly_ looking right at him. Their eyes did not quite meet. 

“Hail Hydra,” he whispered.

Tired of the game, deluded of all hope, Tony said, “Defog, I wanna see him.” He knew it was stupid—he could already see the man, the myth, the legend—but the glass light changed, and Captain Hydra’s gaze, true to his suspicion, shifted immediately, the sound of his voice, the blazing light behind those eyes affixing on him, lethal, astonishing intent behind them. “Yeah. I’m the last face you’re ever gonna see, you know that? Gonna put you down like a dog at dawn.” Lifting the bottle again to his lips, he held it there and did not drink, lowering it after a long moment. “You gonna miss it, Cap? Bein’ alive? Seein’ tomorrow?”

Captain Hydra stared at him, and stared at him, and stared at him, jaw working for a moment. He seemed, oddly enough, beyond words, like he was—afraid was the wrong term, but Tony, sneering, thought, _Yeah, I’ll fog the glass, I’ll turn off the lights, I’ll leave you to die in a dark wet box alone, if God ordains_. 

The tribunal had gone as well as any of them had dreaded it might. First Mr. Silo had collapsed, firmly establishing an atmosphere of terror, of _larger-than-life_ projection that Tony could not dissuade with science or numbers.

 _It’s a psychic trick. You start throwing out commonalities, see what sticks_. 

It was a good parlor trick, and if Captain Hydra didn’t _ooze_ animal magnetism, such belief that his words could rouse dormant volcanoes to anger and shooting stars to flight, it would have been easy to laugh at the monkey trying to make _them_ dance. But they danced. They danced, and Mr. Silo was still, as far as Tony knew, in the hospital. He’d had a _heart attack_ , because Captain Hydra _said so_.

The power of suggestion.

“You want out?” he wheedled, looking right at the man, eyes burning, unblinking, refusing to be the one to cave, even though he knew it was an impossible-to-win situation. “Huh? You wanna breathe fresh air, rejoin your _comrades_ , make the world a terrible place? Better start bargaining. Get on your knees, make a few requests, I’ll _think_ about it.” He sniffed, waiting, but Captain Hydra held his gaze, a snake and snake charmer all wrapped into one devastatingly powerful man. “I want his shield. I don’t care about—”

It was like snapping his fingers—no, it was like a thunderclap, louder and shocking in its transformative quality. Captain Hydra stared at him, blue eyes going foggy, losing focus. Tony banged a fist on the glass, wanting to shake him, to drag him back to the present because they didn’t have _time_ for memory lane, ordering, “You think, you think _long_ and _hard_ , because that is the only secret _I_ care about, that’s a Stark family heirloom, I don’t care about you, I just want what’s _mine_.”

Unresponsive, eyes nearly glazed like the dead, Captain Hydra stood, staring blankly at him.

Then he said, utterly incongruously: “The shield is dead.”

Eyes snapping back to focus, nearly black with undisguised anger, he looked right at Tony—looked _down_ at Tony—and declared, “Long live the _King_.”

* * *

**Act 2, Scene 10 – _Long Live the King; The King is Dead_**

At 4:45 AM, they collected him.

Tony hadn’t slept a wink, so he was there, head pounding but eyes wide open, as were the four others who had been part of the Avengers Initiative and about three dozen others, must-knows, people who could not miss the King’s execution. It was not televised, but security footage captured the procession for posterity, for the masses who would not be present.

It was an unusually early hour of execution, but the King hadn’t slept, so it was scarcely cruelty to drag him out of his cell before dawn. The execution chamber was a short, three-minute parade away. Along the hall, forty-eight faces watched the King of the Underworld, somber as a funeral procession, nearly universally bedecked in military garb. They were well-armed and prepared to die if called to do so to keep him from escaping the facility. They were, one and all, silent, solemn, weighted with the realization that it was the last time King Tut would walk the Earth.

They’d allowed him his full assemblage, in some twisted approximation of nobility—the Pharaoh should die with his crown, his jewels, his robes, they said—but they’d removed the medals, insisting that they would only cause trouble for the chair. 

It seemed deeply ironic to Tony, that of all the means of execution—the lethal injection, the firing squad, and the electric chair—the lattermost was selected as the most humane, under the circumstances. The former options were ruled unnecessarily cruel: they were afraid the elephant would not bleed out quickly, and the lethal injection did not always work perfectly on _ordinary_ individuals. There was nearly no chance either would lead to a quick demise, and while many would say, _let him roast at the stake_ , they were a society beyond _cruel and unusual punishment_ , even within the confines of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The chair was quick, effective, and far less traumatic for witnesses observing a botched execution. It was not just for the dying—it was for the living.

For his part, Captain Hydra was a cooperative captive. He seemed utterly nonplussed to be facing his own mortality, offered no indication that he wished to live another day. He walked proudly in his own boots, a man restored to human decency one last time. He’d even been given the black cap afforded officers in their Army, to complete the image. It would have to come off—as would the boots—but to see him, in full dressage, one last time, was to feel the dawn of the last day of King Tut, immortalized.

At 4:58 AM, they seated him in the electric chair. He was not given a last meal—it was deemed unnecessary, as he had not accepted a single meal or beverage, aside from the single glass of water at the tribunal. All subsequent offerings had been turned down, for reasons known only to the Captain himself. He did not resist or fight or snarl. He did not make a sound, merely folded chained hands on his lap pleasantly, like he was sitting down for a meal, the King on his throne.

Then, at last, the executioner’s words arrived: “Would you like to say any last words, Captain?”

Captain Hydra drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly, and smoothed the fabric of his own pants. It was not a nervous gesture, but as calming as a grandfather rocking in his chair, sedate, settled, calm. He seemed almost happy, relieved. He said, very calmly, “Hail Hydra.”

They waited, hopeful. Tony’s heart twisted in his chest. He wanted to curse at them, _get on with it,_ because the silence was too long. Captain Hydra looked at them implacably through the glass, waiting calmly, eyes clear and open, fearless, dauntless. 

“As you were,” the executioner said, and then: “Commencing execution on the hour.”

Humming to himself, a soft, almost unrecognizable tune, Captain Hydra could not have known the chill that went through Tony as he processed the hauntingly familiar strain of—

_my country ‘tis of thee // sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing // land where my fathers died_

—before, at 0500 hours exactly on June 1, 2014, they turned on the chair, and Captain Hydra let out a single strangled cry, jerked once spasmodically, and then fell utterly silent.

* * *

**End of ACT 2**

* * *

**ACT 3**

**REBIRTH**

* * *

**Act 3, Scene 1 – _I Shouldn’t Be Alive_**

“Your name is Steve Rogers.”

Blue eyes flickered to him. There was nothing behind them. That was fine. That was—expected. _Normal. Reprogramming._

 _Right_.

“Your name is Steve Rogers,” Tony insisted slowly, steadily. Undeterrable. “You’re one of our own.”

“This is insane,” Sam Wilson said, standing next to Tony’s chair, his voice soft, sincere. “What happens when he starts to remember—?” He paused, shook his head in wonder, disbelief. Tony couldn’t blame him. Wilson had been working on the King Tut project for _five years_ , sacrificed a huge part of his life to catching the guy in front of them, but he had also proven himself capable of handling the whole _we’re gonna kill the bad guy, and resurrect the good guy._

 _Hopefully_.

“Is it even possible?” Wilson insisted, sounding edgy. He’d never been within thirty miles of King Tut. Now he was less than six feet away from the man chained to the chair with vibranium cuffs, watching them like a mouse caught in a trap.

 _Best case scenario_ , Fury had laid out, _we wipe him clean, we start over_.

_Second-best, we cause some harm, we get a good person out of it. Give him a good place to rest. He was ours, once. We failed him then. We can’t fail him now._

_Third-best_ —it was sobering, humbling, to be discussing, _third-best_ — _we have no successful reintegration. He’s a prisoner for the rest of his life. I imagine it will be brief._

_Worst-case scenario, he’s just gone. There’s nothing there. Nothing to save. This is an exercise in futility. Any questions?_

They’d gone through with the whole ceremony, from removing the unmoving body from the chair, pronouncing it dead, bagging it, and, in very, very short order, bringing it to an adjacent medical facility to revive it. He was fully unresponsive for two-point-eight minutes. It could be cause for brain damage, on top of the mind-fuckery Hydra had done to him. 

_We’re asking for a miracle when euthanasia might have been our kindest option_.

But seeing the man in the cell, rattling behind the table, not preprogrammed to parade around but lost, abandoned, terrified, he couldn’t help but think, _I’m not giving up. Not like this. Not that easily_.

It wasn’t right, to leave a man to die alone in the darkness, to let him drown when he was close enough to reach out, and grasp his hand.

Even if the man at the other end would sooner break it off before he’d grasp it.

 _This is going to be a team effort_ , Fury insisted. _Stark, if you’re in—you’ll be running point. This is your project. It has to be—we can’t do this here. There are too many eyes, too many_ whys _. People will not understand why we didn’t just let him die in the desert. Not until we show them what he was._

 _I’m here to save Captain America,_ Tony replied. _If it’s possible—then I’m game_.

Looking at the man gazing vacantly around the Stark Estate in the boon dogs of Virginia like he was trying to place how he had come to be there, dressed neither in the red-white-and-blue they wanted him to be or the red-and-black that had made him a legend of lightning proportions but simple gray-and-white garb, as neutral as possible, Tony repeated, almost more to himself than Wilson or the shadow of Captain America before him: “Your name is Steve Rogers. You’re one of our own.”

* * *

**Act 3, Scene 2 – _Containment Breach_**

“ _I got him_.”

“Where?”

“ _About nine miles downslope from the compound. Looked like he was just takin’ a walk_.” A beat. “ _Still had the cuffs on. Lucky nobody called the cops. Looks like some sort of asylum escapee, one sock on and everything_.”

“Cute.”

“ _I’m hilarious. This is crazy, you know. This is the most—well. Formerly, the most dangerous man in the world. He can’t even tie his shoes. What are we doin’?_ ”

“With luck, Wilson? The right thing.”

“ _I’ll drink to that. We need better security. Can’t have this happening again._ ”

“He sleepin’ in your bed or mine?”

“ _Very funny_.”

“I’ll look into monkey-leashes. They’re all the rage with parents these days.”

“ _You’re a riot. I’m bustin’ a rib_.”

“Yeah, well. Can’t all be this young, beautiful, and funny. See you when I see you.”

“ _Uh huh. And Stark?_ ”

“Yeah?”

“ _Lay off the liquor. Maybe you’ll keep the door shut more._ ”

“I drink exactly the right amount for this—”

“ _You know, it’ll always feel like that, until you or somebody you love gets hurt. It’s never too much—until it’s too far. And I’m tellin’ you, as a friend—pull up. I don’t wanna see you get hurt. Don’t hit the ground. Take it from a former pilot_.”

“Give you wings, and this is how you thank me? Secondhand parenting?”

“ _Get you a monkey-leash and everything_.”

* * *

**Act 3, Scene 3 – _Too Far_**

“You have to eat.” Supremely irked, Tony chucked an apple next to him and ordered, “Eat.”

Kneeling in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows with his weight on his heels, the shadow of Captain America flicked his gaze to the fruit, then to Tony, before he returned his eyes to the forested foothills outside the Blue Mountains Stark Estate. 

His hands were folded meditatively in his lap, restful in their bulky vibranium cuffs. They hadn’t let him off-leash—couldn’t, really. He hadn’t said a word, hadn’t given a single indication beyond the vaguest complacency that he could be _trusted_. 

For all Tony knew, he was simply biding his time, waiting to kill him in his sleep with a butter knife. If it wasn’t for J.A.R.V.I.S.’s constant reports—including his supremely imperturbable remark of _Containment Breach, Sir_ —Tony wouldn’t be able to turn around without shaking apart from paranoia. 

It had been three days since Captain Hydra had died and the ghost had been spirited away, and Tony had no idea how he was supposed to survive another week, let alone a month, let alone a _lifetime_. The short answer was, _he wasn’t_. He was the foster home, the waystation between the grave and society. And he supposed it was only fair, after everything, that he was the one who bore the bulk of the burden, he _had_ brought the man back from the dead the first time, but—

“Eat,” Tony insisted furiously, ripping open a cabinet, grabbing boxes of food and storming over to him, dumping them on the floor messily. The ghost didn’t look at him this time, gaze affixed to the window and the blue-gray hills beyond, hazy in the summer heat. “Do you want to go back? Because that’s where you’re headed.”

Wringing his hands in his lap, face still unnaturally blank, the ghost didn’t respond. Tony nudged him with his foot, just a short jab meant to get his attention, but he flinched, curling inward, an overreaction that made bile rise in Tony’s throat. 

“Look,” he began, the word like ash in his mouth, hating himself and hating the ghost and hating _Captain Hydra_ and everything around them, stalking off, searching for a bottle to lose himself in. “You’re an adult. Live or die, it’s your choice. I’m not here to make it for you. I’m here to _watch_. It’s your call. Your choice, Cap.”

Upending the bottle in his own mouth, he let the haze wash away the darkness clawing at his throat, crushing him from all sides, huddling in the corner of the living room, a shadow he couldn’t get rid of, couldn’t stomp out of his life, because he’d _had_ to go and find it, had to go and drag it out of its _hole_ , because he was _Tony fucking Stark_.

“God, I hated you,” he seethed, leaning against the counter, narrating from across the room. “Stole so many fucking hours of my life. So many _nights_ , I didn’t sleep because of you. I _still_ don’t sleep because of you, you know that? Of course you don’t, why should you? And old you wouldn’t care. So why should I care about you, huh? What’s in it for me?” 

Fishing around, finding his stash of blueberries, he jammed a mouthful clumsily past his lips, his trembling hand the only visual indicator that he wasn’t holding his liquor as well as he’d like. “What’s in it for me? You know, I still haven’t seen a _dime_. Apparently you ‘didn’t die’ and I ‘have enough wealth to glut myself on for the next ten centuries’—well, I didn’t go in the desert to _die_ , I went to _kill an elephant_ , and now—what’d I get? All I got was _you_.”

Pushing himself off the counter, he stumbled, nearly fell, declaring, “All I got was _you_ , big guy, and you’re—you’re nothing. You hear me? You’re _nothing_. I _saved_ you, for what, exactly? What kind of hero saves a _monster_? I was paid to _kill_ an _elephant_!” he roared, but the ghost didn’t turn, didn’t react, a wall, a hunched-over huddle of a person.

The door slid open. Tony couldn’t slow his breath, couldn’t stop panting, swaying on his feet, hand still clutching the bottle like he’d lose it for good if he let go. Bruce appeared in his line of sight, a worried look on his face, and then, somehow, Tony was sitting on a couch, trying to puzzle out how he’d _gotten_ there, even though the world pitched dangerously and he had to fall onto his side or sink completely. He fell over. He sank into darkness.

* * *

**Act 3, Scene 4 – _Sinking in Darkness_**

What was it like to be buried alive?

It was like one hand clawing at the earth above your back, aware that there was no feasible way to begin to unbury yourself, scraping metal fingers over solid stone in futile desperation, no leverage, every appendage cocooned permanently. 

It happened so quickly. One moment you were deflecting a gun and killing a man in the same dual movement, and the next you felt a titanic repercussion before the roof came down upon your back, crushing you to the floor. You tried to get back up, immediate, instinctive, but you never made it. The stones hammered on your metal spine, the weight pressing you downward, the whole of it like an avalanche, smothering you in a sea of volcanic blackness. 

Against all odds, you kept one hand above it, twisted excruciatingly above behind and above your back, grasping in the only way left to you for safety, and that hand came to flail in dizzying openness, an open cavity, _an open cavity_ , proof that there was still space and life and _hope_ up there, if you could free yourself. 

That you _could_ be free, if you could only unbury yourself. 

That hand coming to rest in space carried with it the sobering realization that, had you acted less quickly, or had you simply been _less lucky_ , you would have been buried completely, and even your loudest screams would not have carried through all that stone, leaving you no hope of survival whatsoever. 

In that darkest of scenarios, you could imagine it what would transpire: in three hours, you would have run out of suit power. After that, it would have taken mere minutes before you would have drowned in carbon dioxide in complete darkness, gasping and gasping and gasping for breath, gulping air that felt thinner by the moment your lungs gave out.

And then you would be forever sealed in the tomb of King Tut.

All in the name of Captain Hydra—who was not there, who did not sleep.

* * *

**Act 3, Scene 5 – _Breaking the Fast_**

Tony opened his eyes, and it was not eternal darkness that greeted him, not gritty sand nor burning acid in his mouth, but the familiar quiet of his own home. His own _bed_. He did not understand how he had come to be here. He arose, and wandered, searching. 

The compound was quiet, uninhabited. It was easy to get lost in, but he did not allow his mind to wander for long, refocusing. What was he looking for?

He searched and searched in clothes that clung to his skin—how long had it been since he had taken care of himself? Since he had looked after his own skin, decaying in the tomb of King Tut?—and with breath rasping in his throat, for signs of life. He expected to find bodies, those he had slain, those Captain Hydra had killed, the line between them no longer clear. _I am no monster_ , he thought, breathing rapidly, because he knew that, with absolute surety. What he had done was for the just causes. He had never tortured at the whims of insanity, never killed a good person. He _helped_ people. He was no elephant killer.

Dizzy, he ventured into the kitchen, surprised to find the ghost sitting at the table. He sat with cuffed hands folded on the table, watching Tony intently. 

Tony didn’t know why he _knew_ what to do. He simply acted, fetching a bottle—a simple red wine, less potent than his preferred poisons that he used to annihilate his own thoughts—and gulping down a short swallow, before, wordlessly, holding out the bottle.

The ghost reached, unthinkingly, drawing up short. Tony didn’t even entertain unlocking him—those hands had killed far too many to be free; even letting him walk was risky, no matter that there were _three_ S.H.I.E.L.D. agents on grounds, and a Hulk—but he did set the bottle in the ghost’s reach, not taunting him with something he couldn’t have.

The ghost grasped it immediately, brought it to his mouth without a word, and drank deeply, actually spilling it over his mouth but not slowing down, eyes closed, not caring that he was a thief, taking what was freely given and so much _more_ than was expected, but Tony didn’t feel anger or frustration. It was like his heart was beating again, a relief more powerful than watching the sun come up, or hearing the words, _I have no plan to kill Captain America_ come out of Nick Fury’s mouth.

It was so goddamn easy, and he felt relief like lightness in his chest, that it wasn’t impossible, that he was just _slow_ , not understanding, not getting the weird half-human language that Captain America spoke.

_I don’t speak anymore._

_I just need_.

And he still needed—he still _needed_ , and Tony scrambled, nearly tipped out of his chair, already grabbing a pitcher and filling it with water, but the ghost just blinked at him, patient, unpresumptuous, almost painfully hopeful. He wasn’t—no, he _was_ thirsty, surprising himself, the cold water more refreshing than the wine, and if he was a little clumsy than the man formerly known as Captain fucking _Hydra_ was the last person who had room to judge him.

He was patient, only twitching when Tony finally slid the pitcher towards him, and Tony thought, _Bingo_.

He snatched it, a little too hard, startling Tony, but Tony didn’t let it throw him, just sat back hard in his chair, heart pounding in his chest.

 _I’ll be fucking damned_.

He was still grinning like a fiend when Wilson showed up later that morning, in the proper morning, not the after-midnight morning that barely qualified, and saw the fucking _decimation_ , a Roman feast of cheese and crackers and grapes and unmade sandwiches, all of it picked to atoms, and mirrored, “I’ll be damned, Stark.”

* * *

**Act 3, Scene 6 – _Progress_**

It was nice to see Captain America filling out again—it had been painful to see him rail thin, spider-thin in prison—but he was still far from his old heroic self.

He didn’t speak, at all, except for very, very halting attempts at negations and affirmations, the beginnings of _yes_ and _no_ , yuh, _nuh_. Its own pidgin plea, cut off, like they weren’t the right answer. He bit his lip bloody when asked about his shield, tried to claw his way free. Tony let him, even though it hurt to watch—he refused to tranquilize the poor bastard, who’d had enough mind-fucking for a lifetime—and Wilson had been on site enough to help calm things down. Nobody could get _through_ to him, not really, but they could talk _to_ him. That was a start.

“Blueberry or raspberry?” Tony asked the world’s most dangerous man lingering by his shoulder, dressed in streetwear and still looking lethal—more lethal by the day, less like roadkill and more like _Captain America_. He still didn’t take the initiative, didn’t eat unless he was invited to share, and Tony was the chronic snacker. _Finally—my superpower saves the day_. “Or—blackberry?”

Captain America—the man who was starting to resemble Captain America, he amended, those blue eyes still little more than an echo of their former _I believe in the good, the just, the people_ —merely swallowed, just a little, a hopeful gesture that reminded him more of a dog than a person. 

“Assorted berries it is,” Tony decided with a shrug, grabbing all three plastic containers, resisting the urge to snap his fingers playfully—that, he’d learned, was not a good gesture, any more than using his feet to nudge him or touching Cap’s hands was—as he said, “Come along, squire, I have much to do.”

He popped a blackberry in his mouth and handed that bin to Cap, adding, “Like to show you _Jurassic Park_ , kind of afraid dinosaurs might freak you out. They had—dinosaurs, in the nineteen-twenties, right?” Naturally, the man who was starting to resemble Captain America didn’t respond, merely shoveled a handful of blackberries into his mouth. Tony was amazed he’d lasted as long in captivity as he had—the guy was a _tank_ , and he seemed hungry at least as often as Tony, inasmuch as he had yet to turn down a single bite—but it only redoubled his determination to make sure he never went without again.

 _Give him a good endpoint. We failed him once; we won’t fail him now_.

“Catch you up in no time,” he vowed, feeling friendly, charitable, sober. Four days and counting. Model citizen.

* * *

**Act 3, Scene 7 – _Night Terrors_**

Tony fancied himself an expert on all things that went _boo_ in the night.

He still awoke in a cold sweat on a regular basis, unable to shake the visceral feeling of stone on his back, of knives in his chest, of terrorists in Afghanistan who wanted Tony Stark’s money and Tony Stark’s genius to build them Tony Stark’s guns to protect them from Hydra’s cruelty—he was still a human-person, despite the larger-than-life image he cultivated. Undoubtedly, it would astonish, perhaps even disturb, the public to know that he was not invincible.

Wandering around his own mansion in a state of disorder, he found himself looking at the curled up figure on the floor in the corner of the main room, just by the window. It was clear from the rigidity of his posture that he wasn’t sleeping soundly; sweat gleamed on his brow in the moonlight, tension in every line of his body. He didn’t have a blanket or a pillow, just slept on the hardwood like a dog—twitched like one, too, curling inward, shivering.

Tony didn’t say anything, didn’t know what he would begin to say, just ambled heavily over to the couch. When the ghost didn’t rise, he snagged an afghan blanket from the back and, still waiting for an out, moved to his side. _You’re the most hated man alive_ , he thought, pitching it over him, somewhat unceremoniously. _Do you know that? There are people who would pay me to kill you_.

With a noise that was painfully close to a whimper, the ghost clutched the blanket to his mouth, breathing against it harshly, far too close to the sounds of the mask, shallow rasping noises.

 _Hail Hydra_.

Shaking his own head in a vain attempt to clear it, Tony retreated, yearning to be free—but no more, he suspected, than Steve Rogers.

* * *

**Act 3, Scene 8 – _Order Doesn’t Come Through Pain_**

Tony felt like he was preparing to swallow fire. He was pretty sure swallowing fire was less dangerous, actually. He was about to vocalize his genius intuition, _Let’s see if we can handle swallowing fire before we let Captain Hydra go_ , but Wilson just asked: “Stark?”

And he said, “Yup. Square deal.” Fishing in a pocket, he produced the key. Steve Rogers stared at the key like a snake to a charmer, transfixed. Tony swallowed, resisting the urge to repocket it, to bury it, to burn it to ash, to say, _Nope, nope, not doing this. This is crazy_.

Two weeks was not enough time. If anything, they’d passed the critical threshold—Cap was _strong_ again, no longer on death’s door but filching whatever scraps they’d lend him, shadowing them, perennially present. He didn’t _seem_ dangerous, only ever seemed—vaguely heartbreaking, resuming the same meditative pose for hours at a time in front of the windows, rain or shine, never speaking to them. If he had anything he wanted to say, he didn’t show it. But looking at Tony know, eyes shining, brighter blue than he’d ever seen them, he thought he saw the first glimmer of something new: _Hope_.

 _I have to do this_.

If he didn’t, they would never get anywhere. He’d be their dog, fed from their hand, trusted as far as their leash, and maybe that was better than Hydra had ever done, but it wasn’t what he deserved. He was human. He deserved to be free. And even though he could walk the compound, even the grounds—under supervision, which was easy, given his stick-like-glue attitude, and Tony thought, _Are you just hungry, or hungry for something?_ —the visible bondage was a stark reminder of the past.

But it had only been twelve days since they had spirited him away from the grave. He wasn’t ready. He was still a monster. Underneath the façade, he was a _social manipulator_ , a man capable of killing them all and running off, disappearing forever. They would be hated by history, mourned by nearly no one, for letting him go. He was King Tut, the legend that would never die; he was _Captain Hydra_ , the monster that came back from the dead to fight again.

The man who, were it only for his voice, his _heart_ , could have been Captain America, stood before him, hope in his eyes, hands folded patiently, looking at the key but not reaching for it. He swallowed again, the longing motion more expressive than any half-formed _yes_ or _no_ could have been.

Tony hesitated, because this was the real problem: “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

King Tut looked at him, right at him, those eyes that had bored into the souls of stronger men and ripped their throats out without flinching. There was no malice, no hatred. He was impossible to read. Tony shuffled a half-step closer. King Tut didn’t move. Wilson, Banner, even Barton stood nearby—Romanoff, ever the silent sentinel, stood ready to intervene from a distance. But King Tut did not look at any of them. He looked at Tony, watched him reach for his hands. “It’s okay,” he said, insisted. “It’s okay.”

The cuffs rattled, once, noisily. King Tut’s expression didn’t budge. Fear was not an emotion he expressed, not like they did, not anymore, and Tony hesitated for a moment, well aware that, even if he wasn’t the killing machine he’d once been, he could still seriously—mortally—wound Tony. He should get the suit. He should restrain him, then back away, when it was safe. That was how S.H.I.E.L.D. did it. It was the smart thing to do.

“It’s okay,” he said again, as the cuffs clattered again, not moving towards them. He waited. And waited. It felt like forever, and he was nearly sure that nothing would happen, that he was waiting for nothing, that it was a pointless task. _Nothing is going to happen_.

But it was lying underground, one hand still dragging at the soil, desperate for freedom, when, all at once, he felt a firm, emphatic hand clasp it, hold it. _It’s over now. It’s gonna be okay now_.

He didn’t move, in no hurry—they _had_ time, finally, no ticking clock on the wall informing him that their precious hours were draining away—and, it may have been five minutes, it may have been an hour, but, with the slightest forward movement, King Tut—Captain Hydra— _Captain_ _America_ , lost in time, lost in history, cuffs still clicking a little, extended his hands to be broken.

And Tony set him free.

* * *

**Epilogue – _One Year Later_**

“It looks good. Sir.”

Slanting a sideways glance at him, Steve Rogers said, “Sir?”

“Captain Rogers,” Phil Coulson amended, smiling broadly. “Can’t tell you how good it is to say that.”

Smiles were still like strangers in Steve Rogers’ home, but he welcomed them from time to time. “It feels good,” he admitted, looking down. “I always did like blue. Black was never my color.”

“It’s the eyes,” Phil said prophetically, pointing at his own, bright and blue. “You know. If they had the tech, I bet they would have—”

“I bet,” Steve agreed, calm, but comfortingly heavy, wanting to cut off the train of thought before it could gain traction. He didn’t like talking about them. _Hydra_ talk was a fast track to a headache, like drilling screws into his own skull. It was uncomfortable on a good day. And he was admittedly, already a touch skittish—the last thing he needed was more fuel on the fire.

Phil said, a touch sheepishly, “Of course, sir. Sorry, sir.” Then: “It’s good to have you back, Captain Rogers.” Then he left Steve alone backstage.

“So, I was thinking,” Tony Stark began, breezing by. Steve turned to face him, jittery heart slowing in his chest, mind blank but chest _warm_ , some of the tension in his shoulders easing. He couldn’t describe the emotion he felt seeing a VIP keycard hanging conspicuously from Tony’s neck, as if the immortal visage of Tony Stark wasn’t _enough_ to open any door. “I was thinking, after this, we buy an island. I still have sway. Even though,” he added, shaking his head tragically, “I still haven’t seen a _penny_ of my just desserts.”

Looking Steve over pointedly, Tony added with a grin, “I like the scales.” Dusting his hands over his own shoulders instead of Steve’s—Steve appreciated the demonstration, very aware that he’d only be edgier with hands in his space, that he was still learning _touch isn’t pain_ —Tony explained, “They really bring it together. Old-fashioned. But good.”

“You don’t think it’s . . . flashy?” Steve asked, trying on the word as he turned, the scales catching the light a little. He was matte black and shadows. He wasn’t _flashy_. He’d never been flashy, never been meant to draw attention like that. He was supposed to fade into blackness, to hide, to vanish. That was what he was good at. It was almost disarming to think that he would stand out, that he would _shine_ , in this uniform. It made unease settle heavier in his chest.

“That’s the point,” Tony said, rolling his eyes like it was obvious, reaching up to smooth his own tie that didn’t need smoothing, a nervous gesture. “I’m not losing you twice.”

Heart thumping hard in his chest, Steve assured, “I don’t think you have to worry about that.”

“No, of course not. Because of the scales.” Nodding prophetically, Tony squinted at him and asked, dead serious, “You okay?”

Steve drew in a breath, to make sure his tone matched his intent: calm, steady. “ _Okay_ and I haven’t lived in the same neighborhood in a long, long time.” He swallowed compulsively. He wished, all at once, he had a glass of water, and that he could go sit in a dark room for a while. He pushed the impulses aside; he wanted to do this. He _needed_ to do this. “But I think we’re getting along as pen pals.”

“Steve Rogers,” Tony mused, saying his name like it was something worth saying, a pronouncement worth its weight in gold, making him look down, almost abashed, “I had no idea you were such a poet.”

“Tony,” he warned, serious, and Tony said, equally serious:

“I’m sorry. Sometimes I just—you know?”

“Yeah,” Steve sighed, because he did. He did. He knew what it was like to not have words, or to have too many, sometimes. Or to have only the wrong ones. There were two he never said, would never utter again that, still, rose like bile in the back of his throat from time to time, urgently demanding expulsion. He always swallowed them down. He wasn’t going backwards. He wasn’t going back to his own grave anymore. “I—I’m just not sure that this is a good idea. I’ve been gone a long time. And people—” He swallowed, again. He felt very unwell, all at once. He wanted to go home.

Tony said, “Hey,” in that gentle, steadying tone. Stepping closer, all levity banished from his face, brow furrowed a little in seriousness, he added, “Can I—?”

Steve nodded once, just a little. He still held his breath, still consciously did not flinch when Tony reached up and cupped his face. It was a strange gesture, uncatalogued, but _touch is pain_ was catalogued, reinforced. Every time hands skidded over his skin, it was like a spark, a fire that he had to remind himself did not burn. Tony’s hands did not burn. He tilted Steve’s head, just the slightest bit, bracing his forehead against Steve’s. Steve closed his eyes. It did not burn. _You’re okay. You’re okay_.

“What happened to you was a tragedy,” Tony said, voice soft, words brushing over his collarbone. “What we’re doing today? Is victory. The good guys win, today. But—” He pulled back, holding onto Steve’s face but allowing Steve to hold his wrists, hold his wrists and not flinch, as if Steve had not broken hands before, would not break hands again, “It’s _your_ victory, Steve. And that means, you claim it how you want it. If you wanna go out there, say hello to the world, you can. If you wanna come home with us, you can. One way or another—it’s your call.” He let go.

Steve held onto his wrists, just for a moment longer, finding balance between them. “I’m a monster,” he reminded in a whisper.

Tony smiled gently. “No. You’re just Steve Rogers. We unmasked the monster a long, long time ago. And if you want to be—you can be Captain America.”

Swallowing a third time, Steve looked at the door, leading to the stage proper. He said softly, “They’ll crucify me.”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Tony said seriously. Steve tightened his grip, just a little, involuntary but not painful. “And, Steve?” He looked him, dead in the eye, as Tony said seriously, “I won’t let them.”

He meant it, too.

Releasing him slowly, Steve straightened his shoulders, wearing his new uniform, and told Tony, “I wish—” It choked in his throat. “I wish I had it.”

Softly, Tony said, “I don’t need the shield.” Simply, emphatically, he insisted, “I got _you_.” And he smiled, listening to the murmur, adding softly, “If you want, it sounds like they’re ready, Steve. Ready when you are.”

Heart beating fast, Steve said, “Don’t go.”

Tony promised, “I’ll be right here.”

Steve nodded again. He felt no fear. He felt devoid of emotion, of joy, of anticipation, of dread. He felt only the tremble in his hands, and the deep awareness of what people might think of him, and what the most tactical maneuver was. 

Then he squared up, and approached the curtain, and stepped into the light.

And the world did not howl or curse or crucify at all.

They cheered. And for the first time in a very long time, it felt like a world Steve Rogers wanted to live in again.


End file.
